Adara VS Jan 23: Trad VS Indie ~ *Spoonie Edition!*
In today’s video I go over my derailed NaNoWriMo, but how I clawed back to finish my chapter outline.
Visual Description:
Shows Adara sitting on a sofa filling in a green notebook with times worked and adding gold stickers to the pages. Then she talks directly to the camera. The ending image shows a dark starry sky above a forest canopy with the words ‘writing my story one day at a time’ in the stars.
CLARIFICATION: Looking back at this video, I have fallen into the trap that even I refer to, of substituting the terms 'self-publishing' with 'indie publishing'. Indie Publishing is a category that can refer to BOTH self publishing AND publishing via an indie press. Sorry for any confusion!
Time Stamps:
00:01 - Intro
00:11 - January word count
03:56 - Trad VS Indie Discussion
23:42 - Overview of current projects
25:43 - Outro
Transcript
Hello and welcome to The Canopy! In today's video: Adara versus January - a lot of tough publishing decisions.
I'd originally planned that January, and for this year, I would be dedicated to writing my second novel, which is still my main goal. I would like to finish writing my first draft of my second novel. So I've recorded as usual, on my laptop just over to the side here, all of my word counts throughout January, which I'm going to write down in my notebook, and then give myself stars accordingly. As I'm doing that, I would like to chat with you about the things that have slowed me down this month, in particularly making a very very very big decision between traditional publishing and Indie publishing, which has not been easy; especially when spoons are involved. Spoons being measurement of energy, and I live with chronic fatigue with multiple chronic illnesses.
[Sings nonsensically to self]
Let's say that's 755 words. A very strong start. Very strong start.
The 26th was the last time I wrote something for the month, but that was for good reason. I was rather distracted back by novel one. And that rather creates a bit of a flaw in this entire procedure, because I'd set myself a tariff, of saying that for every 400 words I would write, I would give myself one gold star. I didn't factor in any of the other revisions or edits that I may have to have done to novel one. I didn't factor in rewriting my synopsis, or entering novel one into competitions, or any of the publishing research that I've done this month; or any of the people that I've spoken to or life. But let's nevertheless let's count up and we'll see how we've gone, first of all with the stars. There's one star...
It was also a nice in December to finally cash in a lot of those books that I'd owed myself from across the previous few months. Financially I hadn't been able to get out and buy more books, but then Christmas came and I was able to afford more. So I had owed myself quite a number, because the way this tariff works is for every so many minutes I've worked, or so many words, I give myself one gold star; and for every 10 gold stars that I earn, I can officially trade them into myself to say that "right, okay, you've earned the right to buy yourself a new book for reading material." I've got to say, I'm getting through, though, that Christmas influx at quite a pace!
And there's that one...
Okay. So this is one... two... three... four... five...Five stars, and a total of... 5550 words.
I can tell you I've done a lot more work than that, but this is where novel 2 is at. I'm currently in chapter three slash four, I think. I've started chapter four, and I'm hoping to get a lot more words this month, now that things with novel one have kind of simmered down a bit.
So where is novel one? Novel one is currently sat up with a sensitivity reader, and I am overjoyed at that. Overjoyed!
I have also done an awful lot of soul searching over these past few months. My goals for January last year for the year was to start querying my novel, which I'm titling 'Vermillion Rising' or 'Drawing Red'. More details for that are on my website www.adaraspence.com, and long story short, my querying didn't necessarily get me anywhere. This is by sending, you know, out of batches of queries - but very selectively to the agents I was sending them to. Maybe it's that my query wasn't the best, or maybe it's that my synopsis wasn't the best, that I just didn't get everything in there - the whole dimensions of what I was trying to do. Maybe it was just my sample pages weren't the best.
But ultimately, the feedback I got in some parts was this is going to be a hard sell, and with the state of the industry at the moment, if you already don't have a very large large platform, or you are literally ticking every single box for what is sellable at the moment, and kind of on trend, then why should a publishing house take you on, and take that risk? Why would they put money into a debut author and take that risk, unless they are certain it is something that will sell - it's going to be an easy sell? It's a criticism that people have been saying for a long time, which is if you go into a supermarket you will see the same author names over and over and over again, or celebrity names potentially with ghost writers. It takes an incredible amount to publish in traditional today. Publishing houses are businesses, and they will only take you on if they think that they can make money, and that is a very big gamble; and their ability to take that gamble is becoming stricter and stricter. So the people who do then get a publishing deal are becoming fewer and fewer and fewer. It's becoming rarer, and even when you do get that, the advances that you get so the payment for your rights is also getting less and less. I've heard people say that they were thankful that they got their publishing deals 10, 15 years ago, because they don't think they would have gotten a publishing deal today.
So then it becomes look - why am I doing this? Why am I writing? And for me, I want people to read my novel. I think people will get a kick out of reading my novel. I think it will be an enjoyable read for them. You know I... I write because it's an escape for me, but I think it can also be a bit of an escape for, and an experience for the people reading it too. So I want my novel in front of people, and I also want it to be accessible. So what does that mean for me?
That means that as well as an e-book, I would also want a paperback. Some traditional publishers go with them e-pub first, so they may buy the rights to your book, and if it's a small press may, you know, publish it as an e-book only. They may have the rights to the paperback. They may reserve judgment on whether they want to fork out money to convert that over or not. You don't necessarily have much control over that, once you have given them those rights.
Similarly, particularly on the accessibility route is, I know people with poor eyesight who would prefer a large print book, and there is no guarantee that a publisher, unless this is a bestseller, would make a large print version of my book.
Similarly in terms of audio, they may buy the audio rights to my work, and as much as me and a very very skillful agent could negotiate and try to say "right, okay - if you don't use up these audio rights within three or four years then the rights revert back to me." Even if you can somehow sway a very large publishing house or a small publishing house to do that, there's still no guarantee that they will. Now, that might be a gamble for you, if you can't afford to hire someone to narrate your novel. Maybe it's not a novel. If it's non-fiction, maybe you can narrate it yourself, but that uncertainty is something that I didn't want.
So ultimately, I know it costs an absolute fortune. Do I have the money for it currently? No. However what I do have is a situation where with technology with Google Play, you can have audio narration of your novels from AI voices. That is something I'm considering, however I do think that's going to be more widespread. At the moment it's limited to Google Play. I can say though in a few years time with the way that things are going that it may spread to other platforms for example Kindle. I am in no way undervaluing the human voice or the human expressions. That is always my first preference. But I can see it becoming an industry, even in traditional publishing, where one day we would - may get two versions of an audiobook: one being AI - priced at a slightly lower price point, and another one with an actual actor or actress a voice actor or voice actress, and I would be willing to pay premium for those, just like I would pay premium for a beautifully designed hardback of a book or to get it first, you know if I first listen. I think there's room for both. I would love to see what I can do to get a voice actor or voice actress to voice my works. That is something I'm still looking into, but ultimately the decision to do that would remain with me if I went with Indie publishing.
The other thing to factor into this is energy. I know a lot of people with chronic illnesses by this point, and a lot of people take this in different ways. For example, some people are very happily traditionally published. They think that it works quite slowly, the traditional publishing path. Much much slower than with Indie publishing and self-publishing - I'll get to that there's a bit of a slight difference later on. So for some people they think, "Yes - only one novel a year, maybe less than that. That is perfectly fine with me. My goal is to get readers to go into Waterstones or Barnes and Noble, and they can pick up my book off a shelf, and that's more likely to happen if I am traditionally published. So they will work for years and years and years to polish their one novel, maybe duology, and to get that out. And that is fine. And then when editors or agents ask them to say, "Right. We need you to do these revisions in this time frame," they are upfront about their illnesses, and they say yeah, actually this is going to take me a bit longer because I'm unwell, and quite often an understanding editor, for an absolutely stonking manuscript will say, "Yes, okay that's fine. Thanks for letting us know, and we'll see what we can do." They are human. Yes, they have a very very tight schedule, but they can jiggle things around if needs be. And I've heard cases where that's happened, and people the editors are very very understanding.
On the other hand some people just don't want that pressure, and I get that. They would rather be masters of their own daily lives. Maybe they can only feel well enough for a few seconds or a few minutes of every day - maybe not even up to an hour of every day, and they still want to chip and chip and chip away at something. Now I know that the current idiom in Indie publishing is you have to release quick to be earning money, and I suppose that comes back to the idea of are you aiming for this to be a business? If you are earning, you know, writing to make money, then maybe. But if you are putting money into this as a passion project, as a hobby, as something that you would - you know - just to stamp to say yes, I'm a selling author, then by all means you can do it yourself. In fact, there's actually nothing stopping you working with your own time frame to upload an e-book straight to Amazon KDP for free. There is nothing stopping you.
The thing's stopping me from doing that, as I've said, are I want options for accessibility, and I also want options of quality as well. It came to me that from the point of view of an author - it's like oh - there's a stigma there. I mean, even as we say Traditional versus Indie, traditional always comes up first in the conversation. Why? It's kind of an unwritten bias because that's the status quo. Everyone needs that book deal, you know. That traditional - it has the Gatekeepers for a reason, it's to ensure that there's quality there. But from a reader's perspective, how much do they know about publishing? To them, a good book is a good book, and a good read is a good read. From my point of view, the difference is okay, so who's paid for those editors, and who's paid for that cover designer? Because as long as I do all the work for the developmental edits, and I hire good editors, and I work with them to make my novel the best it can be, then I can produce a novel which should be as high a quality as anything else that you're going to pick off a shelf, and that's the sort of quality I want. And it's why it's taken me about three years at the moment, maybe four, Now to get to the point where I'm at.
And I've done an awful lot of research, and what I found especially quite astonishing is about said gatekeeping. In traditional publishing you have to query agents. With that comes a lot of rejection, sometimes even no response at all. The query trenches for me were absolutely silent. I think I got one person who found me in a Twitter pitch competition, and I was very thankful for their input into my novel, and you know, they're excited for the concepts, but you know, they had someone kind of in a similar genres. It wasn't really what they were looking for, especially with the slightly paranormal slant, and that's fair enough. However mentally, if you're doing this as a hobby or a passion project and not necessarily as a business, how much mentally for your own sake can you take of that rejection, and is it worth it? Is that toll of the constant rejection worth it? And you're told time and time again, "Ee well, if you're going to be a writer get used to rejection." But why? Why does that have to be the case? If you can then go and find editors and people who will want to work with you you know, from you know people who've spoken to, that they would be interested in reading your novel, and they like the premise? You know, that there are niches online, specifically quite small niches where you would be appreciated, then why go through all that rejection? I think that's from a bit of a bygone era where, once again, traditional was the only way to go.
But once again they're businesses and their focus is to make money which is very similar to independent publishing, but not self-publishing. Independent publishing at this point referring to Independent publishing houses, where you pay a publishing house to publish your novel for you, and once again I have heard people from both sides of the spectrum on this. So I've heard people who have had terrible experiences, saying no keep - the rights to your work. That that's what's important. You won't, like a publishing house, you may not be in control of what the cover looks like, how it's edited, how it's marketed if you're going to get marketing, and it may not be what you're after, but you may have also then sold the rights to your novel. Not all of them will take the rights, that's something that you need to really look into.
However some people I know have flourished with that. They are perfectly happy with that decision, and they're happy to carry on working with these people, who in their eyes know more than what they do, and if that gets them, you know, just concentrating on the writing only and they're happy to pay for people to then be able to read and develop this product that people can read, then that's good for them. They've had good experiences and there are some indie publishing presses out there who also do similar things.
Where it gets for me is the rights issue. That's a bit of a hang up for me. I would rather maintain the rights to my work in certain areas. I would be willing to give up my rights for things like foreign, rights translation. Rights things like that, for my English speaking audiences in particular, I would like to keep those rights. Those are my biggest audiences.
Thinking about the accessibility, the rights, and my own energy timelines is what's brought me back around to independently publishing. Ultimately I want to be in control of just about every aspect of how this is going to go, but I do want industry input, because I want it to be a very high quality product. I've used Reedsy. Reedsy being a website which acts a bit like an agency between you and industry professionals, people with proven track records of years and years of experiences. And what I found there is the response to my novel was very very good. A lot of editors were interested in working on it and they were quite excited to work on it. The premise excited them. So that was a case of right: I've bypassed the gateway of the agent. I bypassed the gateway of the publishing housing saying 'is this marketable enough for us?' to get genuine enthusiasm from editors themselves, and that enough is industry recognition for me!
Other industry recognition has been the fact that I've been entering my novel into competitions, and this is something else. I have always thought that novel competitions were for people aiming for traditional publishing only. And for a while I was entering those novels, still kind of straddling that line as I was becoming becoming quite disillusioned but as similarly I kind of knew about all the ways I could go with my novel in terms of self-publishing - so independently publishing myself. And after revisions and revisions, and edits and edits, my novel was long listed for one, and that almost threw a cat amongst the pigeons quite honestly, because yes - I finally have industry recognition. However, one of the top prizes is introductions with agents and editors, and normally for someone after traditional publishing they would be trying to bite my hand off for that - you know, to say yeah, that's great - brilliant. Go for it! And what was attracting me was the cash prize. I don't expect with my genre fusion to particularly get past the long list. That remains to be seen, however the cash prize... I was thinking yes, I could really do with that. That could help me to hire the editors, to hire proofreaders, which both of which I'm happy to see I have now have lined up! One of them I now have contract with, the other one has declared interest. But the thing for me was okay, can I raise money to actually then hire a narrator? Something to think about!
But also, there are other writing competitions that I'm now entering as well which, for example, would give you an entire day on pitching your novel and marketing. That would be fantastic for me, because a pitch is also very very good at getting readers' attention, and to find an audience even for self-published works. Similar can be said, for example, if you enter a competition where the goal is to find a mentor. That's fantastic because a mentor for writing - it can only, you know, take you further than where you are before. Those are very valuable prizes. It's not necessarily about getting the publishing contract at the end of it. There is still value to be had in a lot of these competitions, and I'm quite pleased now that there is more diversity in these competitions as well, and a lot more on writing organisations too.
There's a lot more awareness now of availability, and the want of people to self-publish novels and for readers who want to read those more niche works, and publications who may not otherwise get the chance. There are also more editors I've noticed that are taking work independently with authors outside of publishing houses, and they are themselves still industry professionals. So that's my take on this stigma!
The other thing is novel formatting and cover design. I still have very little idea of what I want for covers, especially with it being a genre fusion. I think the more I go writing novel two and I get a feel for the series, that may lead me more down that path. So I would be willing to take advice from cover designers, which once again, I would try to hire professionals who have industry experience because I want a high quality product.
For me it's not so much about making my money back. I've spent a lot of time and a lot of years, ever since I became ill and unable to go to work, crashing out of university. I've spent an awful lot of my time writing this novel, and I want my work to be shown to say, okay - even though I'm ill I've worked for years, even just little five minutes a day sometimes, sometimes days of nothing; but I've not given up, and this is kind of the fruit of my labor, and I want people to enjoy it. So I'm willing to work with people to make that happen. And it takes a long time, because saving up money for one to get it there, but that's once again my decision.
But also in terms of formatting, instead of hiring a formatter I have purchased the software Atticus, which should help me to format my pages for both the regular publishing and the large print and e-books. And it also gives the opportunity to see how it will play out your book - how it will look on various different electronic devices. Now I know that the Mac equivalent of this is Vellum, but I'm a Windows person. I really look forward to the day when we get the app for Android for Scrivener instead of it just being iPhone!
That's where I'm at at the moment. Novel one is with a sensitivity reader, and I currently have an editor lined up to work with me in April, and after that hopefully I have also got the interest in a proofreader. Following that, while at the sa- following that, we'll see where we go in terms of cover design. But by that point, hopefully I will also have been working while this is all going on behind the scenes, on novel two, which is a very very big challenge from novel one. Especially with the with the head hopping. It may just be the autism, it may not. We'll see. But it's a lot of fun.
It's slow going, but I hope to see you around either in the comments section of other YouTube videos, or on Twitter, or every now and again on TikTok, on live writings if you're hosting them... If anyone knows of other live write-ins let me know. I may or may not turn up. I tend to hop in the UK friendly time ones. Sometimes that borders if someone is doing a very very early morning U.S stream, I can hop into that.
The other things I did in January: I wrote A spoken word piece for the International Holocaust Memorial Day, and I also managed to get myself out to a photography exhibition. And alongside each photograph were pieces of spoken word, poetry, interviews, song lyrics... and this was held at a library, and it was an absolute joy and a privilege to be there. It was a joy to get out to see that. Other than medical appointments, that was my one trip out of the house in January. Yep. Chronic illnesses. I am housebound. And last but not least, I have finally made headway on my accessible kitchen. The designs have been redrawn, and that should be going ahead sometime towards the end of March, early April.
That's it for me today. I have to go now, as I have my second novel to be writing. I'm just looking at the time. There should be some writing sprints happening online this afternoon, and we'll see how it goes. And I hope you have a wonderful February, however it goes for you too, whatever you get up to, and whatever that looks like for you in terms of productivity. And remember that rest is productivity, and to give yourself a break. Like I said with the traditional versus Indie versus self-publishing, it's all down to you and ultimately what you want from the process, and comparison is the thief of joy. So I have to go now, as I continue to write my story...
...one day at a time.
Credits:
Thumbnail and ending image created free using canva.com
Music Credit 1: ending theme – Adara Spence
Music Credit 2: Beloved - Sakura Girl https://soundcloud.com/sakuragirl_off...
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/3ji1zZc
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/omTgn4GQcKA
Music Credit 3: The Day I Met You — Arvnd [Audio Library Release]
Music provided by Audio Library Plus
Watch: https://youtu.be/0tq32HUIOu4
Free Download / Stream: https://alplus.io/day-i-met-you
Music Credit 4: Soon We'll Fly by Ghostrifter Official https://bit.ly/ghostrifter-sc
Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported — CC BY-SA 3.0
Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/35reep7
Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/q2vomZqSJuE
Music Credit 5: Xmas by Mr T Spence (used with permission)
