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BONUS: Jessica Brody on Traditional Publishing vs. Self-Publishing · The Daily Writer

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to this special bonus episode of the Daily Writer Podcast.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: I am thrilled to bring you this short bonus conversation with Jessica Brody, who is the author of over 20 novels, as well as the amazing writing guide called Save the Cat, writes a novel.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: She is also the founder of the online writing school called Writing Mastery Academy, which I joined a few years ago and which I really love.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you are working on a book or you plan on writing one, I know you're really going to enjoy this brief conversation about traditional publishing versus self-publishing.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: So here we go.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Jessica, thanks for joining me for this special bonus episode where we're going to dive into a really specific topic.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: And what I want to ask about is self-publishing versus traditional publishing.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: This is kind of like you know, I grew up in the 1980s where, well, I guess wrestling is still big, but you know, we would have like nature boy Ric Flair versus whoever the other popular wrestler guy was.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: And they would kind of duke it out.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: And this seems to be like a topic where in the writing community, people are always duking it out over self-publishing versus traditional publishing.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I have no idea why I started this with a wrestling analogy.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: I've never done that before, but be that as it may, I don't know what's going on with that.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: But what are your thoughts on where a first-time author should start thinking about this process?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're getting lots of information about lots of different publishing options.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: But kind of give us um a little glimpse into your mindset about where a first-time author should go with that.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no problem.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, I have to start with the caveat that I have not self-published.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I have been traditionally published from the beginning of my career, um, dating way back like 12, 13 years ago.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I took the traditional publishing route, which you know means selling your book to a publisher as opposed to publishing it yourself.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I have information, but I don't have both sides of the equation.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you know, at the time that I first started um trying to get published, self-publishing wasn't as big as it was now.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I don't know if it's safe to say that I wouldn't have um explored self-publishing if I had tried, if I was sort of starting my career today, because self-publishing is a much more viable, accessible uh option today than it was back in when I started out.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And when I started out, it was sort of like you had to, um you had to kind of start your own publishing company or pay someone to you know format your book and the whole Kindle thing wasn't a thing yet, you know.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So the whole um uh ebook, it's like self-publishing ebook wasn't a thing.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So it was like a really there was it was a very daunting process and there was a lot of obstacles and a lot of uh money involved in order to get started.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, today it's not that way.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you can you can literally put up a book tomorrow on Kindle and it's and it's there and you can spend no money doing it.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that being said, I think that the tradition the self-publishing um authors who do the best are the ones that do put a little bit more effort into it in terms of um maybe hiring a professional cover designer, hiring a professional editor to make sure the book is top-notch and there are no unsightly typos and things like that.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but like I said, I can't really speak too much to it.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: I think the decision to publish traditionally or self-publish is really just about where you want to put your efforts.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, with with traditional publishing, you write the book, you have to find an agent, you have to, because you can't send it directly to a publisher, you have to go through an agent.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: So finding an agent is a lot of work.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've got to write what's called a query letter, which is a you know, snappy, salesy summary of your book to try to get an agent to read the book.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Then the agent has to read the book, they have to like the book, they have to represent you.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Then it goes through a whole other process of them trying to sell the book to a publisher.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there's a lot of work on that side in terms of getting through the you know, the gates and the gatekeepers to the publishing industry.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, then once you're there, there's a lot of stuff that's done for you that is not done for you on the self-publishing side, like the publisher designs a cover for you, they have copy editors who work with you, they have editors who work with you, they distribute your book, they put it in the bookstores, they, you know, create marketing plans for you, things like that.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's not to say that you can that you shouldn't and don't have to do a lot of your own marketing, but there's a lot of stuff that's done for you.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um in tradition in self-publishing, you do a lot, you do a lot of extra work on your own in terms of getting all of those pieces together.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you have a lot more control over everything when you when you do it yourself versus when you traditionally publish.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's also a really big difference in the way that you get paid.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, traditional publishing, they they both have revenue potential.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: They just sort of in different ways.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: With traditional publishing, you get paid a lot less per copy sold than you do with self-publishing, but you get paid what's called an advance, meaning they they pay you money up front for your book, and you you get to keep that money regardless of how your book sells.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's also more opportunity, I think, for uh foreign publications, like foreign, what they call foreign rights sales.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: So when they sell your book to publishers overseas, um, I will say that I think more than 50% of my author revenue has come from foreign sales.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, not from should not from American sales.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: So um my books have done fairly well overseas.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: They've sold in over 23 countries.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um and those were all things that, you know, not to say that you couldn't do self-publishing, but those are things I didn't have to do at all.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like my agent sent those, my agent or my publisher sent the books out to all these other publishing companies and they literally sent me a check.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: So things like that are are kind of in the traditional publishing round.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and with self-publishing, I sort of think the difference is if your book is gonna do extremely, extremely well, like it's gonna sell millions of copies.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think probably in the end you might make more money just self-publishing because you make more money per copy than you would traditional publishing.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't haven't done that math, but the chance that you will sell a lot of copies is a lot more likely when you traditionally publish because you have distribution behind you, a whole sales team behind you, a whole marketing publicity team behind you, and the publishers have these relationships with bookstores, uh, relationships with um retailers, even like Costco and Target and Walmart and things like that.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um so those are, I think, where it kind of breaks down.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, that's the longer answer than I'm sure you were you were hoping for for this short bonus content.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: But no, that's that is that's exactly kind of what I'm getting at because I tend to in my world, I tend to talk to more uh self-publishing people.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really, really helpful to have uh a different perspective on traditional publishing because there are a lot of benefits that are oftentimes not talked about in the in the traditional or I'm sorry, in the self-publishing world.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think honestly, a lot of the self-publishing stuff is driven by the fact that a lot of people who want to self-publish are they have kind of an entrepreneurial mindset.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's kind of like a built-in impatience with the whole traditional publishing process, which is slower, it takes more time, and then you have to go through more channels.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, on the flip side, like you said, or like you alluded to, it's pretty rare that you come across a traditionally published book that has a bad cover that's not laid out correctly.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like one of the things that publishers do really, really well is they publish really high quality books.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: So there's like a built-in quality check there that oftentimes is not there with self-publishing.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that yeah, that can be the case.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the the self-publishing authors, like what you said about the entrepreneurial spirit, I that's when I sort of really urge people to be to do the self-publishing.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like, do you want to do all of that stuff on your own?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like, do you want to sort of run your own business, hire your own people, make all of the decisions, um, you know, and and be on involved in all of the back-end uh stuff, um, then self-publishing may be a great option for you because you you might like really enjoy that.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, me personally, I just want to write the books.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to be involved in all of that.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um I love, I love when my publisher sends me a cover and says, what do you think?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, well, this could be a little bigger, and they're like, great, and then it's done.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I don't want to kind of, I don't want to sort of deal with all of that other stuff because I'd rather just write.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if you are the kind of person who really enjoys that, um, I think that's a good way to go.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you are the kind of person who does just want to write and not have to worry about all these other things, um, maybe traditional publishing is um is better for you.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: I will say the people that I've met who are really, really good at self-publishing, and I've met a few that are so inspiring, like they're just making it work and they're they're, but they are working hard at it.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and they are putting in a lot of time and effort and they enjoy that, and that's great.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I will say that the books that do rise to the top in the self-publishing world are the ones where that extra effort is made.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think that there are exceptions to the rule, which I will quote, you know, the Martian is one of the biggest exceptions I can think of in terms of a book.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: But there are exceptions, but normally when you just say, Oh, I'm just gonna put it up there and see what happens, normally you're probably not gonna sell a lot of copies.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: You're probably sell like 10 to your friends.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um the Martian being the exception, he literally said, I'm just gonna put it up for my friends.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Then like then, like 10 days later, it had like a thousand sales and then a hundred that, you know, it's just sort of this crazy thing.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I wouldn't go into self-publishing hoping you're gonna have a story like that, because it's it's the chances that you will are pretty slim.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, on the other hand, with traditional publishing, I wouldn't go into traditional publishing thinking you're gonna write the next Harry Potter because that is also a huge uh exception to the rule.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I've been able to make a decent living writing books that aren't Harry Potter, or even, you know, slightly less successful than Harry Potter.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think my books are moderately successful, but none of them are, you know, books that you would recognize that you could just tell anybody about and they would know the name.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I still have managed to make a living just writing those kinds of books.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I know that that you've done some stuff with Disney uh with a line called uh Disney Descendants.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: How has doing books with Disney opened up other opportunities for you?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Because obviously Disney is a household name, etc.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Has that been something that has opened some other doors?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, I'm kind of curious how all that came about, come to think of it.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's funny, I don't think that there's anything that has come out of that in terms of my writing career.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I it's definitely introduced me to more readers, which is great.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the the way that it came about actually was traditionally when when you have a company like Disney who has a property that they want to turn into a book, um, into a book series, like I wrote for the Descendants series, was how I first got involved.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, traditionally what they do is they go out to the agents out there and they ask the agents, you know, who do you have on your roster that would be good for this?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I've had a agent come to me many times and say, you know, this company has called and they want to do a book series based on this property.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Are you interested?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and from there you usually submit a writing sample and then they they choose somebody to write it.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or if you're sort of a really big name, they might come directly to you and say, we want you to write this this book for us.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mine came about a little bit differently.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: I had a friend who was writing for Disney who introduced me to their editor there, and she was looking for someone to write this new uh descendant series called School of Secrets.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh as a huge Disney fan, I had a little bit of a, you know, a little bit of a panic attack, like a little fangirling moment.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, so I got together with uh this editor who was who was doing this series, and we wrote five books for that series.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then from there, she hired me to write another series based on the Lego princess characters.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so the the princess characters that are in Lego form.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I did a series for them for that.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think other than just sort of getting more readers that way, I don't think anyone's come to me and say, you wrote the descendant series, I want you to write this.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: But it I guess it helps in terms of my resume, where if if I were to do another work, they're called work for hire.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: If I were to do another work for hire, I I do have that on the my resume of having worked for Disney.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: So they know that I can work with uh work with existing properties and within existing worlds.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: That is awesome.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's interesting because this all seems to go back to relationships, you know.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: But no matter if you're doing traditional or self-publishing, it just comes down to the people that you know and do they trust you?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Can you do their work?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like the the the basic stuff that our mom taught us all.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, be nice to people, be good at be good at what you do, be excellent.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: It sort of all comes down to that on some level.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, writers can have a bad reputation for being sort of curmudgeony herbit hermits, and you know, but we really can't be if we want to write, if we want to kind of break out beyond just our own, you know, our own little worlds.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you have to, you know, you have to be able to work with people.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as a traditionally published author, I have to work with a lot of people.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: I have to work with editors, you know, and then I have to work with copy editors and I have to work with sales and marketing.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so if you're sort of a really difficult person to work with, um, you know, it's gonna be harder for you to sell more books unless you're, you know, some sort of superstar that they can't afford to lose.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it it might, you know, it might hurt you in the long run.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it never hurts you to be pleasant and and to be, you know, amiable to and and nice to work with.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Jessica, this has been a blast.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you sticking around for this bonus interview.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: This was a lot of fun.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I've learned some things, and um, I just appreciate all the cool work that you're doing with your books, with teaching people writing, and just with adding so much value to the world of writing and storytelling.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's really been a blast.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was really it was fun for me too.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I hope you enjoyed that bonus content from Jessica.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: I know I had a blast learning about her views on traditional publishing versus self-publishing.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: I encourage you to take one piece of information or one piece of advice that she shared and apply it to your writing and your business as soon as possible.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because all the knowledge in the world is not going to help us unless we actually apply it.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: So take action today and watch your writing and your business start growing.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'll see you tomorrow.