I heavily debated posting this. I might still take it down, because I’ve long ago decided that the internet doesn’t need my “wisdom.” Also, I am bitter and jaded. However, we keep getting repeated questions and there is some weird erroneous stuff floating out there. With that caveat, here is the basic primer on who does what. If for some bizarre reason, you see some value in this and want to keep it for reference, here is the PDF.

It might have typos in it. Writing it was stressful, leave me alone. If you are a trad author and want something included in the PDF or this post, drop me a line through the contact form.

Manuscript – the file you are working on. Complete manuscript – finished work of fiction that has not been through professional edits.

ARC/Galley – Advance Reader Copy. File the publishers send out for early reviews. Usually, post-copyedit but before the proofread. See below.

Developmental/Content edit – the edit that focuses on storytelling: plot, pacing, characterization, etc. The content edit takes the longest to get and the longest to get through.  This is the time to make large changes if needed.

Copyedit – the edit that focuses on grammar, punctuation, fact checking, and narrative inconsistencies.  Clunky sentences, unclear sentences, mutating names, eye color, people sitting down after they already sat down – all of that gets corrected here.  Last chance to make significant alterations.

Proofread – final chance to fix minor mistakes. Do NOT make significant alterations at this stage. Every time you mess with your sentences, you are introducing errors that the copyeditor will not see. Also, the typography has been set at this stage, and the book has been prepped for printing. Minor fixes only, unless something really must be corrected.

The publishing house will often state that they will charge you money if you make too many edits at this stage. The wording can be found under the Editing Section of your contract and will read something like:

The cost of the Proprietor’s alterations in the proofs in excess of ten percent (10%) of the initial setting cost will be charged against the Proprietor’s royalty account, except that the Proprietor will not be charged for corrections arising from the typesetter’s failure to accurately reproduce the copy-edited manuscript.

I’ve never had it happen, but I saw it once.  The author rewrote significant parts of the book and repunctuated almost every compound sentence.  It is very rare, so don’t stress out about this and fix what must be fixed, but keep your corrections small.

If you are rephrasing sentences at this stage, try to keep the number of characters the same, so you don’t screw up the paragraph layout. If you add too much, the paragraph will run over and it’s a bigger fix on their end.

Yes: “Her dress was white.” (20 characters) -> “She wore white.” (15 characters.)

No: “Her dress was white.” (20 characters) – > “She wore a white gown that was the color of fresh snow that fell at the first hint of winter in the month of Freezeyourbuttoff.” (128 characters.)

To quickly find out the number of characters, highlight the problem in Word and click on the word count in the bottom left corner. Include spaces in your count.

People

People you usually have contact with are marked with *

Content editor*– the person who does the content edit. When you are published by a traditional publishing house, your primary editor does your content edit.  That editor is your main point of contact. They do not work for you. They work for the publishing house. You are not an employer and employee, but colleagues and peers. If you are coming from the selfpublished side, there may be a tone shift here.

 Your content editor is your advocate, and they usually know what they are doing. They are invested in your book’s success. They want the book to be a commercial and critical achievement. The function of the content editor is to shape the manuscript and identify problematic areas. They may suggest extensive changes, and they may propose solutions that will not work for you. If this happens, don’t panic. Address the problems themselves, even if you fix them in a way that the editor didn’t anticipate. As long as the problem goes away, most editors will be fine with it.

Occasionally, you will get an editor who will insist on their way or the highway. The buck stops with you. You can refuse to make edits but consider this route very carefully. Most of the time, if you don’t make the changes they suggest, the book will likely still get published. Cases where the book was pulled because of editorial differences are very rare and are usually initiated by the writer, but the publishing house has the power to cancel the book.

Look at your contract under something like Deliverables or Delivery of the Manuscript. The wording will be something like:

This is a very old contract boilerplate. Note that they reserved the right to edit your manuscript whether you like it or not. Your agent should get this clause crossed out.

What happens if you received an extremely light or no content edit: yes, this happens occasionally, especially if the editor has a large volume of manuscripts lined up. If the content editor checked out, there is not much you can do.  Trust that you wrote a good book and perhaps look for a new publishing partner for the next contract.

Editorial Assistant* – this is the assistant of your editor. This person is very helpful. If you need admin things, like updated files or clarification of schedule, this is the person to ask.

Managing editor* – this editor is incredibly important. This is the person who puts everything together: copyedit, proofread, etc. This is the deadline person, the on-top-of-everything person, and you may see their comments in the manuscript, which they will read several times, often saving your bacon when you mess up and nobody else catches it.

Copyeditor – the person who does the copyedit. Usually a contractor. Most of the time copyedits are outsourced. If you get a good one, always request them back. If you get a bad one, ask to switch.

More corrections is usually better than less, even if it makes you want to scream, because at least you know they scrubbed the manuscript. If you get a copyedit that is superlight, you are in trouble.  You can hire your own CE to edit on top of the publisher’s subpar copyedit. The publishing house will not care. If you scan the copyedit, and it is light, and you see a typo on page three they missed, you need to email the editor and ask if there is any additional time you can request to go through it. Usually, they can get you an extra week or two, although not always. Then you run to your favorite freelancer and chuck the manuscript at them.

People get very upset when this happens, because the publishing house takes a huge percentage of the profit and the expectation is that they will provide quality edits. Bottom line on this: you can waste a lot of energy being upset, or you can hire a freelancer. Since your name is on the cover, everything is your fault, and the readers will not care that the publisher’s CE fell down on the job. They will only care that the book has errors that detract from their experience.

Proofreader – usually a contractor. If you have your own private beta readers, now is the time to throw the manuscript at them and ask them if they snag on anything typo-wise. This is the final scrub before publication.

Art director – the person in charge of your cover.  Check your contract.  If it says cover approval, you can veto the cover.  If it says cover consult, you can offer an opinion, but they will go on without you. Everybody else’s opinion often overrides yours. The wording will be something like:

The Publisher will consult with the Proprietor concerning the following, but the Publisher’s decision with respect to such matters will be final:

upon the Proprietor’s written request, the cover concept of the Publisher’s initial edition of the Work;

An email is a written request, and trad publishing houses will absolutely talk to you about the cover.

There is a very limited amount of influence you can exert here. Once they paid for the cover, they like to stick to it.  Yes, you can occasionally get them to change it, but I’ve known people who flew to New York to make personal appeals and still failed. Take it from someone who has had more than one cover mocked by the readers: it is what it is.  Fight the good fight but save your energy. If the book has commercial appeal, word of the mouth will compensate for the damage of the ugly cover.

Cover artist – person who creates the cover image.

Cover design – person who creates overall look and adds typography to your cover.

Editorial designer – person who creates the layout and determines typography.

Publicity* – the person who arranges publicity that does not require money. Interviews, ARCs, social, etc. Book tour – publicity. Maybe be named as publicist, director of publicity, etc.

Marketing* – the person that is responsible for ads and other advertisement that requires money. Incentive boxes for preorders – marketing. Usually, marketing manager or director.

NOTE: marketing and publicity spheres overlap. Sometimes marketing will ask for an interview, and publicity will ask for commissioned art. When posting information on your website, such as “For review copies, contact NAME,” list the publicist, not the marketing manager.

Marketing and publicity are an iceberg. Authors do not see 80% of it. Sometimes that iceberg is tiny. I remember when “online promotion” meant your editor would mention the book title on their Twitter. Yes, you do still need promote on your own. Not, it’s not fair. The world is mean and publishing is meaner.

What to do when there is a conflict: go to your agent. They take their 15%. Let them earn it.

Gratitude Etiquette: get a lot of questions about this for some reason. It is always nice to acknowledge people who worked on the manuscript. Ask the publishing house, and they will give you a list. You are under no obligation to thank people if you don’t like what they did for your book. This is fully your prerogative.

Business gifts are nice but are never expected. If you send nothing at all, nobody will notice or be upset. A handwritten card is always appreciated. If you are sending gifts for the holidays, try to find out what people like. Don’t just send chocolate. Everyone sends chocolate. Sometimes people like cheese or will request a small donation in their name to their favorite charity. Please check to make sure that you are donating to the causes your recipient supports.

I need tea now. Oy.

The post Trad Publishing: Editing and Production Glossary first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Thank you for all the blog prompts. I wanted to answer this one sent to us by an aspiring author:

Since I started writing, I hate everything I read. Reading used to be an escape. It makes me feel like I’ve lost a part of myself.

I think I’ve talked about it before, but coincidentally, Grace Draven and I chatted about this very issue this morning, so I thought I would go over it one more time, while it’s still fresh.

There is no one way to become a writer. There are as many roads to publication as there are authors. But for a lot of people, the evolution of writing follows the general pattern outlined below.

Voracious Reader Stage

We begin as readers. We devour books in a high volume. When I went to the library as a child, I would come out with bags of books, the maximum I could check out. When I took my children to a bookstore, we approached the counter with stacks of novels and manga. Books are inhaled.

People don’t often acknowledge it, but reading is a creative experience. The reader imagines, feels, speculates. All of this is a creative endeavor. It enriches our inner world. The majority of people stop here.

Selective Reader Stage

At this stage, we figure out the specific genre or the type of story that we like and we actively look for it. Because we’ve now read a lot of stories, there is some impatience when the story is too familiar or doesn’t handle certain things well.

‘I Can Do Better’ Stage

The frustration with not finding the exact story we want to read mounts. We’ve found some near misses, where the story comes close to what we want to read, but they still fall short of the mark. It occurs to us that we can just write our own story and make it exactly the way we want it to be.

This is the first writer stage. At this point the work produced is often derivative. We are rehashing what we’ve read and trying to improve on it.

‘I Hate Everything’ Stage

We’ve made our first clumsy attempts at a narrative and showed it to people, and we have some constructive feedback. The feedback hurts. We begin to actively focus on improving our writing, because pain is an excellent teacher and we are trying to avoid it. This is the point where we learn things like “show, don’t tell” and “passive voice” and so on.

Writers are hypercritical of themselves. We also tend to obsess. At this stage, once we see some technical flaw, we focus on it like a laser. We literally cannot unsee it.

For a lot of people, this is the stage where we experience repeated rejections if we are submitting our work to traditional publishers or primarily negative reviews and low sales if self-publishing.

It’s very easy for all of this frustration to turn inward and create a volatile mix of being insecure about your work and at the same time angry about not finding an audience. We are still in the critical/improving our writing stage, so when we look at other published works, especially bestsellers, we mostly see flaws.

You’ve all probably seen reviews that rage about how this dreck could possibly be published when the reviewer’s work is so much better. There is no reviewer more vicious than a writer at this stage.

This is a normal step in writer development. Most commercially or critically successful authors move out of this stage, but some stay here for the duration of their career. It is a very stressful place to be.

Finding What Works Stage

This is the stage where our perspective on the narrative changes. Instead of focusing on what is wrong in the current bestseller, we focus instead on what is right.

This makes logical sense. If a book reached bestseller status or achieved critical acclaim, then its pros outweigh its cons. It is serving something to the readers that is working for them. We need to figure out what it is and apply it to our own writing. Yes, this other novel has flaws. But what is it that this book does right? How can we make it our own?

A writer in this stage finds a balance. We now know what magic we are trying to bottle, we apply it to our writing, and a lot of times, it works. Suddenly we have readers who are asking for more. This is a period of professional growth. Sometimes it can be explosive, sometimes slow, but for the majority of writers who reach this stage, it is lifelong.

We can now read and enjoy fiction again. We develop some confidence in our own craft and give ourselves permission to be proud of the things we wrote because we achieved whatever it was we set out to do with the story. By focusing on the most important elements, we can give ourselves and others some grace regarding small things like overuse of a particular word or funky dialogue tags that previously would have derailed our enjoyment.

If you are stuck in the hatred stage, it is normal. You can get out of it by figuring out what you like about books, finding novels that explore that, and making a conscious decision to focus on how they pull it off.

Hang in there. This too shall pass.

Example:

If I like the subordinate/boss romance trope, I’m going to read a bunch of stories with that trope. I can spend my time picking apart clumsy sentences or ridiculous plot devices, but what I really need to focus on is the power dynamics and the emotion of the relationship. That’s what makes the trope work.

So what are the things that these types of books have in common? Well, the subordinate must be underappreciated. Or perhaps they are appreciated as a professional but are invisible as a person.

Something then causes that subordinate to leave. (This is the change in status quo and this is where we would start our story.)

Perhaps someone else comes in and is held up as their replacement. Or the subordinate has been quietly in love with their boss, but now a clear romantic interest appears on the boss’ horizon, and the subordinate gives up. They feel like they are stuck and staying is torture.

The subordinate attempts to separate and exit the boss’ orbit.

The boss suddenly realizes that there is a gaping hole in their life. It gives them a new perspective, so they pursue the subordinate, at first in a professional and then in the emotional sense.

Why does this construct work? Because there is an inherent injustice here. A lot of us feel underappreciated. To make this plotline successful, we must use that and convince the reader to sympathize with the subordinate. At some point, the readers need to pound their couch armrest with their fist and yell, “That jerk! It’s not fair!”

We then derive pleasure as readers from watching this emotional injustice being corrected. The boss cannot live without this person. They realize they are a jerk. They must atone. Bring on the grovel.

A lot of pack romances use this trope: he is the alpha, she is his sort-of-mate for political reasons, oh but wait, he is bringing in a different woman who is much more badass and the previous political relationship is set aside. But now she will get emotional revenge by leaving so he can struggle.

Your challenge, should you accept it, is to list books that use this storyline in the comments and let us know why you liked them. Please be kind. We are looking to move away from criticism here toward things that bring you enjoyment as you read.

Editor Point of View: Rossana Sasso, Developmental Editor

“You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”
Jodi Picoult

Ilona took us on the lover’s journey between an author and their storytelling craft. First comes the passionate stage. Desire and obsession sweep us up, and we ignore everything but their flutter. Then come the growing pains of settling down, when the lover moves in and things aren’t always rosy. They disrupt our routine. We hate how smelly their favourite snack is. We get fixated on winning every squabble and dig our heels in over where the coffee mugs should live. Eventually, mature love arrives and we learn to be a team. Respect, trust, and collaboration help us fall into a mutual rhythm. Every day together is a little better than everything that came before.

I see the editor’s role as the relationship therapist in this equation. As long as the author and the story still have something to say to each other, it will all work out.

Perfection isn’t the goal, or what makes the journey worthwhile. Writers play their fictional worlds into existence. It’s a ludic urge, a heartbeat that will be preserved at the core of the story and convince the reader to keep reading. Passion and inspiration join together with an idea and shape the narrative organically.

Trying to write in widgets, or by a process of reverse-engineering an artificial arrangement impervious to criticism, will usually lead to writer’s block and burnout—a slog to the finish line and many weeks spent on my editorial couch. Stakes won’t feel high enough, calls to action will be repeatedly refused and underwritten, genre promises broken by darlings that refuse to die, and readers’ expectations shrivelled, unmet and unclarified. And I’ll be able to tell when my couple is just moving furniture around, rather than addressing the structural issues.

The lessons and friction of the I Hate Everything stage are bitter, but they’re necessary and proof that you’re levelling up. Just as a happy marriage isn’t achieved by mechanically ticking a list of bullet points every day, storytelling isn’t about being perfect. It’s about being true to yourself.

The magic isn’t gone. You’re just learning how the spell is cast.

The post The Two Sides of the Reading Coin first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

When Mod R sent over the list of questions, my first instinct was to dismiss it, but then I realized that she is going to spend a long time posting individual replies and that time needs to be spent elsewhere.

So let’s talk about the special editions.

What is a special edition?

A special, or collector, edition is a beautiful edition of a book, usually hardcover, made as a keepsake item. It’s a trophy for your bookshelves. A lot of special editions have foiling on the covers, new cover art, extra art, bonus fiction, and painted edges. Some special editions are printed on archive-quality paper.

Special editions can be produced by specialty small press, book clubs, bookstores, or authors directly. For the purposes of this conversations, all these entities are referred to as the publisher.

Anatomy of a special edition.

Here are some terms used to describe the different parts of the special editions that we get questions about.

Dust jacket – a piece of paper, often with the printed cover or design, that wraps around a hardcover book.

Sprayed edges – the pages visible from the side view of the book. The edges can be uniform in color, they can feature a design, or they can be gilded with metallic finish.

End Papers – When you open the book, before you get to the title page, you will see an illustration that covers both pages.

Color Insert – a full-page color illustration in the middle of the book.

Why do the special editions cost more?

The production cost of a special edition is significantly higher. Some of them use high quality paper. Some have a lot of art. Just the new cover and end papers alone can run in excess of 10K, depending on the artist involved. Then they have to be printed, shipped to the publisher, sold, and then finally shipped to consumer.

Some of that price also comes from exclusivity. Most of them are printed once and never again. Reprints are very rare.

How can you buy special editions?

Depending on the publisher, special editions can be sold to the public directly or can come as a part of a subscription model through a book club.

For example, Subterranean Press functions more like a bookstore. They print a certain quantity of the special editions, and anyone can buy them through their website and sometimes other retailers.

By contrast, the Arcane Society is an exclusive book club. You pay a fee every two months and the Arcane Society sends you a box with two hardcovers, art prints, and a pin. Sometimes Arcane Society releases special boxes, which are available for sale to the public. When those boxes are released, the AS members receive a code, which allows them to access the sale of these special boxes before non-members can buy them. Thank you to Ann Giardina Magee for explaining the process.

The FAQ

I have questions about the special editions.

First step: has the publisher announced the special edition? Is there an actual announcement from people selling these things?

No – the special edition does not exist. Hold all questions until the announcement. The special edition may be in production, and the author themselves might accidentally mention that the special edition is coming, but until the people who are making it are ready to tell you about it, it does not exist.

Yes – Amazing. Direct all your questions regarding that special edition to the publisher.

If the author is the publisher – and you will know this, because the author will be selling the special editions exclusively through their site – ask them. Otherwise, ask Arcane, Subterranean, Owlcrate, or whoever is printing and selling the special editions.

Don’t ask us. We can’t answer your questions.

We have never done a direct sale special edition. All of our special editions have been through specialty publishers. Sometimes our regular publisher makes a deal with the specialty publisher directly, and we are informed of it. Sometimes we make a deal with a specialty publisher through our agent. But in all cases, we do not control distribution, layout, choice of artist, etc. We are consulted, and they ask our opinion, but ultimately the choice is theirs. We just collect our share of the royalties.

Therefore, here is a list of questions that we cannot answer for you.

When will something ship? – ask the publisher.

What does the special edition include? – ask the publisher.

Will it be available internationally? – ask the publisher.

Will there also be an early access code? – ask the publisher.

How is this edition different from the normal book? – ask the publisher.

Who is the artist? – ask the publisher.

Is the art AI? Do you support AI artists? – ask the publisher.

Questions We Can Answer

Why are you doing special editions? – because some people want pretty copies of the books for their shelves and we like money.

I don’t like how the artist envisioned the characters.

Don’t buy the special edition. Purchase is strictly voluntary, and money is too hard to come by to spend it on a collector book that you don’t love.

The characters have the wrong hair/eye/skin color.

One time at a convention, a woman came up to us at a signing, and she was angry. You see, the artist of our Kate Daniels had made a massive mistake and nobody caught it. Between our publisher and us, surely we could get our act together and make sure that Kate, who was a blonde, would be properly depicted on the cover.

I gently told her that Kate has dark hair. She argued with me. She pulled out a book. And then she got angrier and told me she would never buy another of our books again. She had come to right a great wrong, and instead found out that she was mistaken. She felt embarrassed and lashed out. I wished her well.

Your recall might not be perfect. This is a normal human trait. Stuff morphs in our heads, sometimes mixing with other stuff. So please check the text before getting upset.

A note regarding skin color: please try to let go of the preconceived notions of what people of different ancestry should look like. Human genetics don’t work like watercolor pigments. For examples, look up beautiful Eartha Kitt and Kitt McDonald, her equally lovely daughter.

While the final say remains with the publisher, most of them do ask our opinion and if we see something egregious, we will voice our objections.

AI art? AI books?

A lot of us reject the usage of AI in art and fiction. People are genuinely worried about it. Artists and writers work very hard, and most of us don’t earn enough. To see our opportunities shrink because of a language model that was trained on our stolen work is infuriating.

People have come up with all sorts of random criteria identifying the intrusion of AI into our creative space. Weird hands, light sources that make no sense, ellipses, using 3rd person, writing faster than others and so on.

None of that means anything. Hands are difficult to draw. Established artists sometimes have lighting that doesn’t make sense. Ellipses have been used for centuries.

Unfortunately, this urge to protect now led to some kneejerk reactions. We’ve had accusations of AI usage on Candice’s work, on Luisa Pressler’s work, on our work that was written over a decade ago. Someone accused Helena Elias of doing AI art on the Arcane Edition, and we have seen every stage of those paintings, from initial sketch to the final. We asked for alterations and saw them implemented.

Most of us have no idea when art or fiction is AI unless someone left a prompt in or there are melted extremities. We need to be careful that in our rush to right a great wrong, like that woman I mentioned above, we don’t inflict emotional damage on human artists and writers. It hurts.

Please consider carefully before accusing someone of AI usage. As Mod R put it, mislabeling can hurt the very people we are trying to protect.

You’ve always been against paywalled content, why did you include exclusive bonus content in special editions?

… Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture of my face when I read this question, or this blog post would be a lot more entertaining, heh. Most of the time I can understand how BDH arrived at something, but occasionally the logic doesn’t quite add up.

Here is where I think this came from:

In the past, people have repeatedly asked us why we don’t monetize that free fiction we post on the blog by going through Patreon or Substack. We stated – repeatedly – that as of right now, we do no have plans to implement the Patreon model.

Patreon is a service that charges readers monthly subscription for access. Patreon has been very helpful to many authors, and we may consider it in the future. However right now, it doesn’t work for us. We have readers on limited income, foreign readers, etc, for whom that cost might be prohibitive, and honestly charging $5 for monthly access would mean we have to write $5 worth of fiction every month. We have our hands full right now.

I think the statement above must’ve been misunderstood or misremembered, and someone concluded that we promised that all bonus fiction will be forever free. That’s incorrect.

We did not promise free bonus fiction. We said that we are not monetizing the blog. All novels we have published and will publish are “paywalled content.” You have to pay for them to read the story. They are exclusive to whoever is publishing them. They are not blog posts.

A special edition book is not a blog post, either. It is an actual book. It is edited, formatted, bound, and sold. For profit. People are paying premium prices for it, so they should get some bonus fiction. Sometimes it’s something that has been published before on our site but never appeared in print and sometimes it’s brand new stuff.

I understand that there is a bit of FOMO going on here. We choose bonus content carefully. Usually, it isn’t something that is crucial to enjoying the story. Most special editions also have a limited period of exclusivity, one to two years, typically. So all temporarily exclusive content will be available widely eventually but there is no guarantee that it will be free.

We hope to continue to release fun bonus stuff. Some of it will be posted on the blog. And some will be available for purchase. This is a business. We write to earn money.

We have given BDH a lot of extras over the years, so much so that some of it got caught up in the annual archiving and caused some distress. We will be releasing some of the bonus content in themed anthologies through our store in the near future at a steep discount, so if you want to throw us a couple of bucks to say thank you, we will be very happy to accept it. This way you will get to keep it, it won’t be archived, and it will be a lot cheaper than buying through a retailer.

::hug: I hope that clears things up. Dear Mod R, the next time you get a question regarding special editions, please send this link in response.

The post Special Edition FAQ first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Amazon lifted KU exclusivity for libraries. More information in this article from New Shelves.

My question is to the librarians among us. Will your libraries be taking advantage of this feature? Is this something useful or will this have no bearing on your library collections?

The post Kindle Unlimited and Libraries first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Update: We had an unexpected crash that wiped out this post. We recreated it, but you might get it twice in your email.

It’s Monday! The release week is over.

Okay, I understand that enthusiasm about Mondays might seem strange, but to me this Monday means that I finally get to write. I feel like the last 12 months were just filled with editing. Over and over and over. First, This Kingdom required edits, and copyedits, and proofreading.

My BFF Jeanine Frost loves editing.  To her the majority of work is done.  Now you just have to fix it.  She says it’s less pressure.

I dislike editing. I prefer writing. Just sitting down and telling the story. Editing is necessary, but too much of it makes me feel like an utter failure at everything.  It’s also very tiring.  It’s a series of quick decisions which requires a lot of brainpower.

Which is why this Monday I’m so glad it will be Gordon, me, and Solentine’s deeply disturbed, sardonic self. As Maggie says, so damaged, so deadly, so handsome, yet so screwed up.

Mod R sent over some questions that didn’t make it into the Zoom yesterday. Let’s get to it.

I would love to know how House Andrews feels about stepping back into the trad publishing space. They have previously commented on how great things have been, but that was when they were working on book 1. Now that they are under the time crunch for book 2 how have those feelings changed/evolved? Has it been hard to go back to juggling Trad books on contract with self-published projects?

Still liking it. There is something about working with the team of professional people committed to making the book better. We have nothing at all to complain about it at this point. There were occasional bumps along the way, as always happens when the manuscript making its way through the production chain to become a book, but Tor has been excellent to work with.

We have a lot of support from the publisher. We also have an amazing editor. Stephanie Stein is excellent at what she does and very patient. We have a long list of acknowledgments in the beginning of the book, and you can see how many people worked on the book.

The deadline time crunch is a fact of life whether you are traditional or self-published. As much as I would love to say we are at the point where we can take things easy, we can’t. We have financial pressures, fandom pressures, and creative push. Yes, there is less flexibility in deadlines, but there is also a lot of support. The trade-off is worth it.

And, I know I’ve been harping about it but we have to get back into stores. There is an entire generation of readers that we are missing. We’d like to introduce them to Innkeeper, HL, and KD.

Is it scary to start on book 2 of Maggie before book 1 was released?

No, I’m so glad that we are starting now. There are no reviews, no sales numbers, and no expectations. Just the story itself.

“No publicity. No marketing. No nothing.” – quote from previous post. Question: Isn’t the social media marketing? I follow you on at least two networks, Threads and Instagram, and there were constant posts about Inheritance. I’m just curious what the difference is?

I braved Amazon for you. These are the stats for The Inheritance.

There are 2,161 global ratings. None of them are lower than 4 stars. At first glance, this looks like amazing success. In marketing and publicity terms, it’s not.

Here is a recent bestseller with marketing.

Here is the first book in a very successful series also with marketing and publicity.

Do you see how the ratings are spread out? This happens because the book is reaching outside of the author’s fandom. People who are not author’s fans become aware that the book exists, decide to try it based on marketing and publicity, find out that it might not be their cup of tea, and leave a review reflecting that.

This is not happening with The Inheritance.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good book, and we are proud of it, but the reason the reception is so positive is because the majority of the people who read it already like our writing. 

We are not really marketing to BDH, our Book Devouring Horde.  BDH already opted in. The social posts, the newsletter, all of those are just means of notifying the existing readers that a new book is out. We are preaching to the converted in a way.

Marketing would be running ads.  Spending money to alert people who don’t follow us  that the book is out and entice them to try it.  Publicity would be sending ARCs, arranging interviews, making personal appearances in places outside of the author’s immediate space. We’ve done none of that. We didn’t even send the book to other authors to get blurbs for the cover. So when I said that The Inheritance hit #1 on Amazon on the strength of the BDH alone, it was true.  This is all core fandom.

Meanwhile, This Kingdom had two rounds of the ARCs and will likely have another publicity push closer to the release day.

Would I love to see The Inheritance in stores and to see it be promoted? Absolutely. And if it happens one day, I will do a happy dance. And I will even film it for your amusement. But even then, I will remain forever impressed by the might of the BDH.

Thank you! Now I have to work. 

PS Mod R: The paperback format of The Inheritance has now populated across most retailers, so please head to Amazon, B&N, Booktopia etc. for your copy! Reminder that the Ilona Andrews direct store will only sell digital copies at this time.

If you want to purchase from your local bookstore or ask your library for it, you can use the ISBN 9781641973403.

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