0:00

This episode of Writing Excuses has

0:02

been brought to you by our listeners, patrons,

0:04

and friends. If you would like to learn

0:06

how to support this podcast, visit www.patreon.com

0:12

slash writingexcuses. Season 18,

0:16

Episode 16. This

0:20

is Writing Excuses. Deep Dive,

0:22

Publishing is Hard by Dong Wan-song. 15 minutes

0:25

long. Because you're in a hurry, and we're

0:27

not that smart. I'm Mary Robinette. I'm

0:29

Dong Wan. I'm Erin. I'm Dan. And

0:32

I'm Howard.

0:33

So this week, it's my turn

0:35

for the Deep Dive. I'm

0:38

not a writer necessarily, like

0:40

everyone else on this podcast. I'm

0:43

on the industry side, as we've talked about before. So it

0:45

was a little bit of like, what did we talk

0:48

about in my case? How do we do this? And

0:50

I realized that I thought it might be interesting to

0:52

dig into a newsletter that

0:55

I run. In 2019,

0:58

I started a newsletter at that point on Substack

1:01

that was about my experiences

1:03

in publishing. You know, it's

1:06

in part instructive about

1:08

how the business of publishing works, but

1:11

really through the lens of here's how I experience

1:13

it, here's how I think about it, here's how I talk about

1:15

it. And so I've been doing that on and off

1:17

for the past several years, way longer

1:19

than I realized. I thought I've been doing two years, but 2019 is

1:22

not two years ago. And so

1:24

I wanted to have it featured

1:26

on the podcast for us to talk a little bit as

1:28

a way to understand how I think

1:30

about publishing, what perspective I'm bringing

1:33

to the pod, and really

1:35

kind of dig into some of the tricky

1:37

issues that I like to tackle there.

1:40

A couple of

1:42

things, Dong Won, when we do these

1:44

deep dives, often we put your

1:47

feet to the fire and ask you how

1:49

you did things. And also, when

1:52

you say, I'm not a writer like these other

1:54

people, after having read several

1:57

installments of Publishing Is Hard, you're

1:59

right.

1:59

writer. Yeah. Well,

2:02

you're absolutely a writer. Maybe not an author, but a

2:04

very good writer. And again, we're

2:06

going to totally digress on this. The reason I'm

2:08

digressing on this is because I know that we have listeners

2:11

out there who are nonfiction writers, and

2:13

I want to remind them that they

2:15

are writers just like Dong Won is a writer.

2:18

It doesn't have to be fiction to be writing.

2:21

And your public... I will back up and say I'm not

2:23

a novelist and don't write books.

2:26

Very nice. Because I completely

2:28

agree with everything, what everybody's

2:30

saying. And I will say I'm a writer in this regard, which was happy

2:32

to go back and read things I had published

2:34

several years ago, was truly agonizing,

2:37

and I do not understand how y'all do this on a regular

2:39

basis.

2:40

And see, that brings me to the third part of

2:43

this tripartite thing

2:45

of mine, which is now that we've established

2:48

that you are one of us as a writer,

2:50

the first question I have to ask

2:52

you is, where do you get your ideas? Suffering

2:56

and trauma, Howard. Yeah,

2:59

I mean, I get the ideas for what

3:01

I talk about. Basically, by whatever it is

3:03

I'm thinking about

3:04

in what I'm dealing with my day-to-day job,

3:07

right? So what issues are coming up on my inbox?

3:09

What am I seeing people talk about on social media?

3:12

What huge kerfuffle is happening in publishing

3:15

that's in Publishers Weekly this week? All

3:17

those things are things that I start thinking about.

3:19

And then,

3:20

you know, often what happens is I'll see

3:22

a bad tick. I'll see somebody interpret

3:25

something that somebody said as part of a testimony

3:27

or as part of an article. And I'll be like, wait,

3:30

people don't understand this the way that I understand

3:32

it. Writers are seeing things

3:34

happening in the industry, and they don't

3:37

have my 17, 18 years of

3:39

experience of, you know, working inside

3:42

the sausage factory. Are there things I

3:44

can explain about this? Are there ways I can illuminate

3:46

some of what the logic behind

3:49

what looks like a crazy decision is?

3:51

And

3:53

you know, how people might approach it in a way that makes

3:55

life a little bit more navigable for

3:57

those of us in the industry, for those of us.

3:59

you know participating from the other side

4:02

as writers and and people looking to get

4:04

published so

4:05

that one of the things that you just said

4:08

uh... is is a question that i and curious

4:10

that you you talked about seeing

4:13

at seeing a hot take in a row when

4:15

you're when you're writing who are you writing

4:18

for you writing for uh... for

4:20

writers

4:21

you know for the the uh... the young up-and-comers

4:24

that or you writing for fellow industry

4:26

peers to be like hey folks to

4:28

try to get your or does it depend

4:29

the conceit of the newsletters that

4:32

i'm writing for other people in the industry the conceit

4:34

is

4:35

this isn't a newsletter for writers

4:37

as a newsletter for people in publishing

4:39

people who are looking to talk about

4:41

publishing

4:42

in practice

4:44

i know most of who's reading it are

4:46

writers even though every time i post on get lots

4:48

of emails from friends in the industry or

4:50

colleagues or whatever i think it really does resonate

4:52

people who work in publishing but i

4:55

also recognize that that's a very tiny population

4:57

and therefore most of the people reading it are

5:00

people who want to be in who want to be

5:02

published who are either people

5:04

who have books out or or are

5:06

aspiring published authors whatever happens

5:09

to be so there's a little

5:11

bit of a trick that i have to pull

5:13

that i'm writing

5:14

for

5:16

other peers when i think

5:18

about it but then i also

5:20

need to adjust what i'm saying so

5:23

that it lands for people who aren't

5:25

in the industry

5:28

in the same way and therefore may not have all the

5:30

same i don't know internal defenses

5:32

and and understandings of how the business works because

5:35

you know one of the things i want to do is make publishing

5:37

legible to people who aren't in it and

5:39

one of the ways it's illegible is that it's

5:41

a tough business and we talk about things

5:44

that are very important to people that

5:46

their art about their craft in ways that

5:48

art can be very blunt and

5:51

are fundamentally about profit

5:53

and money because publishing is a business

5:56

right and so finding ways to talk

5:58

about those things without Unduly

6:00

traumatizing my audience or discouraging

6:02

people the last thing I want people to do is read this and

6:04

feel like oh I can't succeed

6:06

then I can't publish I shouldn't be trying to do

6:08

this, you know, that's my worst case scenario

6:11

So how do I talk about difficult

6:13

experiences in a way that has enough

6:16

accessibility and empathy for the audience? That

6:18

I can sort of navigate that balance. So it's

6:21

an ongoing conversation my head. It's it's a very very very

6:23

good question

6:24

It seems like that's a very applicable thing then to

6:26

write for one audience and then edit to broaden it

6:29

Exactly. I think that's the thing that a lot

6:31

of people can Incorporate into

6:33

the process right? So my first drafts

6:35

often I have to be like oh,

6:37

I can't say that that's too harsh That's that's an

6:39

inside thought right? How do I edit

6:41

that to be for a broad? There's

6:43

an entire group of Writers

6:46

communicators out there facing the same

6:49

problem and that's the psychom community where

6:52

they are writing from the standpoint

6:54

of scientist but trying

6:56

to write to

6:58

Everybody else exactly and they need

7:00

to make it understandable, but they need to not

7:02

dumb it down They need to deliver

7:05

the bad climate news, but they

7:07

need to not send us into a panic and make us not

7:09

care anymore It's a fine

7:12

line to walk it is I feel like

7:14

it's a very flattering comparison to make and

7:16

I think on that note, let's pause

7:19

for our thing of the week

7:22

So the thing of the week this week is actually

7:24

another podcast It's a podcast

7:26

called friends at the table It's an actual

7:28

play role-playing podcast that is one of my

7:30

very favorite things on the internet The

7:34

previous season of this I think I broadly

7:36

declared on Twitter that it was my favorite piece of

7:38

media That's that year and I still stand by

7:40

that They just launched a

7:42

new season of the podcast called Palisade.

7:44

That's a science fiction story About

7:47

a planet under attack

7:49

by sort of invading forces It's

7:52

a story that is about revolution.

7:54

It's a story about resistance and it's a story about

7:56

giant robots It

7:58

is some of the most interesting

7:59

It's a very intricate,

8:01

fascinating world building I've

8:03

ever seen with fantastic improvisational play. I

8:06

cannot recommend Friends at the Table highly enough, and

8:09

now is a great time to jump in as they just launched their new season.

8:13

I have a question about publishing, it's

8:15

hard. Which is that one of the things

8:18

that I love about it is how

8:20

much personality and personal story

8:22

you weave in there. So you're doing the talking

8:25

about the industry, but you're

8:27

also talking about yourself. How you decide

8:29

how much of yourself to kind of put in

8:31

there, you know what I mean? What to share with

8:34

us when you're sharing all this other information. Yeah,

8:36

it's a tricky question. I think for

8:38

me, making it personal is very important.

8:42

We'll talk about this more in a future episode, but I

8:45

don't want to be someone standing on a hill didactically

8:47

telling you, this is how publishing should be, this

8:49

is the only way to succeed, this is my 10

8:52

rules for success, that's not the kind of thing I'm trying to do.

8:55

And so for me, rooting it in my own subjectivity,

8:58

rooting it in my experience feels

9:01

really important to me. So what

9:03

I want to be doing is telling personal stories. I'm going to

9:05

tell you about stuff I went through,

9:07

but that's complicated because I can't talk about

9:09

client stuff in a direct way. I can't

9:11

expose

9:13

whatever's going on with the particular writers I work with. A

9:15

lot of that is confidential, and

9:17

also my job as a literary agent

9:19

is always to be hyping up my clients. So

9:22

you don't want to necessarily air people's dirty business.

9:26

So it's a delicate balancing act. I am often

9:28

talking about personal experiences, but

9:31

I'll have to be a little vague or allude

9:33

or blend a few things into one

9:36

scenario. So I try to make sure

9:38

that the emotional core

9:40

of it is very personal and very honest

9:43

while having to align some factual details

9:46

and be a little slippery about what exactly

9:48

is what, because I never want things

9:50

to be mapped from one thing I write

9:52

about to a situation that affected

9:54

somebody else.

9:56

Yeah, I find that a lot of times when talking

9:58

about issues is... that if you can

10:01

depersonalize it, or

10:04

decouple it, as you say, from a specific

10:07

incident, that it becomes easier

10:10

for people to apply it. At the same

10:12

time, the more specific you are,

10:14

the easier it is for people to

10:16

internalize it because we learn

10:19

from story. So this leads into

10:21

another question I had, which is take

10:25

us behind the scenes a little bit. How

10:27

do you decide what are the things

10:30

that you want to write? Do you have a schedule?

10:33

Do you just have some burr under your saddle

10:35

that eventually turns into an essay? How

10:39

do these topics get formed?

10:41

Anyone who has subscribed to my newsletter

10:44

is very aware that it is a very irregular

10:47

event.

10:47

I'm not on a regular

10:50

schedule. It's not monthly. It's not weekly.

10:52

There are gaps between when

10:54

I publish things. And that is somewhat

10:57

deliberate. But

10:59

it's because I

11:01

don't have a schedule. I don't have a plan. What I'm looking

11:03

for is, when do I get a burr under my saddle?

11:05

I think that's it exactly. When does something

11:07

get stuck in my head in a way of like, oh, wait, I

11:09

have something to say about this. And sometimes

11:12

I watch a TV show and they did a cool thing. And I want to talk

11:14

about that thing. Sometimes that's somebody's

11:17

having a fight on Twitter. And I'm like, I have thoughts

11:19

about that. But I'm going to let that cool off a

11:21

bit before I share my thoughts because

11:23

I don't want to contribute to the discourse. I want

11:25

to have insights that I think might

11:27

be helpful to people, hopefully. So

11:31

it's kind of all over the place. I

11:34

am not much

11:36

of an advanced planner when it comes to the newsletter.

11:39

I like to go a little bit more off the cuff than that.

11:42

But yeah. Do you

11:44

have a file of

11:47

draft essays, a boneyard

11:51

of things where you're like, oh, now

11:53

I'm ready to finish this essay and

11:55

I will release it to the world. You

11:57

know, I did. And then about.

11:59

two months ago, I went through and deleted all of them because I

12:02

looked at all of them. I was like, I don't want to talk about any of this

12:04

anymore. You know, the moment had passed for

12:06

me. Right. And I think... But these people just

12:08

died inside. You mean your moneyard?

12:11

Those are words. They are words,

12:13

but there's always more words and there's always more ideas.

12:15

Right. I think that's one thing that

12:17

I encourage people to say their stuff, go

12:19

back to what's in the chest, go back and

12:21

see what's in that desk drawer. But also

12:24

don't be afraid of throwing stuff out. You will

12:26

have more ideas. More stuff will

12:28

happen. And, you

12:30

know, even as I was trying to pick

12:32

out newsletters for us to talk about for the podcast, I

12:34

was going through some of it. I don't necessarily

12:37

agree with everything I said before. I was surprised actually

12:39

by how much I was like, oh, I still vibe

12:41

with this. I still, you know, stand by what

12:43

I said then, even if I would change a couple of things

12:45

here or there. But,

12:47

you know, an idea that I had

12:49

for a newsletter

12:51

eight months ago, then I was like, I don't know, not interested

12:53

enough to finish this.

12:55

I'm happy to let that go by the wayside and maybe

12:57

something similar will occur to me again in

12:59

six months from now. And I'll do it then, you know?

13:02

Yeah, I find that that's true for me

13:04

with a lot of things that there's the, you

13:08

know, the person who started that

13:10

original thing is not the same person

13:13

that is sitting down to write it. Exactly.

13:16

And it's unless I have

13:18

a new spin on something, I used

13:20

to plug every day and talk about stuff and

13:24

I would bank things where I'd

13:26

like write several things in a day. And I don't understand

13:29

how I did that, A.

13:31

But also frequently,

13:33

I would come back to something and be like, I don't have

13:36

no connection to this. That was a different

13:38

person who wrote it. Yeah,

13:41

I mean, sometimes I think, oh, maybe I'd have more subscribers,

13:43

maybe I'd grow the audience more,

13:45

those kind of things, if I did have that bank

13:47

of more regular content to tap into. But

13:50

it's also just not the kind of project I'm doing. I'm doing

13:52

this as much for my own interest

13:54

in amusement as for anything else. There

13:56

is a paid tier to the newsletter,

13:59

but also. All the content is free. Anyone

14:02

can read any of the issues. The

14:05

paid thing is almost more of a tip jar of like, do you like

14:07

what I'm doing? Do you want to support it? I

14:09

started doing Twitch streams and bringing guests

14:12

on and those guests are paid roles. And

14:15

that's kind of what the subscribers go to is just making

14:17

it so that it's worth it for me to spend time on this and

14:20

to bring in some guests and things like that. But

14:23

for me, because it's free, I feel

14:25

comfortable posting stuff when I want to post

14:27

stuff when it feels relevant to me.

14:29

Okay, I want to dig into this a little bit.

14:33

Let's talk about what you

14:35

think the newsletter has done for

14:37

you. Clearly it's a thing that seems primarily

14:39

designed to give back a little bit. You

14:42

love the industry, you love working in it. You

14:44

want to talk about it and you want to help people out. But

14:48

at the same time, a really common

14:50

piece of advice we hear is, you

14:52

know, authors get a newsletter.

14:55

You're not exactly in that position, but

14:57

what are the ways in which you think running

15:01

this newsletter has benefited

15:03

you or your career?

15:04

It's a brand building exercise for me. And, you know,

15:07

the revenue from it is nice. It's a little bonus.

15:10

The educational component is a lot of the emotional

15:13

and investment in it. The professional

15:16

reasons for doing it are, is it does

15:18

build my brand. Writers

15:20

get to see, this is how I do

15:22

business. This is how I think. This is how I think about

15:24

the industry.

15:25

Does that make sense to me? Does that seem like someone

15:28

I want to work with, right? It's a way for

15:30

writers to sort of audition

15:32

me a little bit before working with me.

15:35

If they like my ethics, if they like my perspective,

15:37

if they like

15:38

my view of how to be in this business,

15:41

that's very important to me. It's also

15:44

marketing for me towards publishers,

15:46

right? So a lot of editors read my newsletter.

15:48

I hear from them, I get lovely messages from them.

15:51

And, you know, those are people who want

15:54

to work with me, who they think of me positively

15:56

when one of my manuscripts lands in their inbox.

16:00

So it sets me up in a number

16:02

of ways. It lets me have a brand in

16:04

a way that was

16:06

more sustainable and

16:08

clearer

16:09

and more fun to do than Twitter was. I mean,

16:11

Twitter is a mess in a lot of ways.

16:14

So the newsletter let me talk

16:16

about things at length in ways that

16:19

let me be much more clear about who I am

16:21

and what I stand for.

16:22

This brings me back to something that both you and Mayor Robinette

16:25

said earlier, which is that you change as a person

16:27

and what you believe changes. So if

16:29

part of it is branding yourself,

16:32

how do you like square that with the fact that

16:34

you may be a different person now than

16:36

the brand that you established maybe a year ago or

16:38

two, three years ago? I mean, like I literally have

16:40

a different gender than when I started this newsletter,

16:43

you know, like some of these little I was like, I don't use that pronoun

16:45

anymore. What's that doing here? You know, like, yeah, I've

16:47

changed a lot. And I certainly

16:50

don't have the perspective in this business that I did when

16:52

I started much less five years ago, much

16:54

less probably last year, it's a business that

16:56

evolves. Publishing is so slow in

16:58

certain ways. But how we see

17:01

content, how we see our roles in it, what

17:03

are you know, I mean, I have

17:05

a lot of thoughts about workers rights in

17:08

the industry. And you know, Harper Collins had

17:10

that massive strike last year, which

17:12

concluded

17:13

positively, they got a lot of what they wanted.

17:16

And like, that has absolutely informed my thoughts

17:18

about like, how do we resolve a lot

17:20

of the issues in publishing in the

17:22

industry? It's like, well, I was pro union before,

17:25

but boy, am I pro union now, in

17:27

terms of publishing workers in terms of younger

17:30

editors and assistants and people coming up, how

17:32

much better would this industry be

17:34

if we had stronger labor rights and relations,

17:37

right? You know, not sure all of my publisher

17:39

friends would like to hear that from me, especially those

17:41

in more senior positions. But, you know, our

17:45

thoughts and things do evolve.

17:47

It was interesting to go back into the archive and see what I

17:49

still said about what I didn't. But

17:52

I think it's a living the thing about a newsletter

17:55

is it's a living document. It's not I

17:57

wrote this and this was my opinion, and it's calcified in

17:59

certain ways. way. And I hope

18:01

people can see that and understand that. I haven't

18:04

really gone through pruned old things. They don't necessarily

18:07

stand by anymore. But there's nothing

18:09

in there where I was like, wow, I said some I was way

18:12

out of pocket on that one. But you know,

18:14

it's it's subtler than that, I think. Yeah,

18:17

I would say in a lot of ways, the brand

18:19

you are building here is less about

18:21

the specific insights and more

18:23

about

18:24

your style of thinking and analyzing

18:26

things. The way in which you present

18:28

things rather than the specifics that you present.

18:30

Yeah, I also

18:32

love them because the

18:34

newsletters sounds like you. Like

18:37

the one that we were

18:39

reading specifically for this, I

18:43

saw you give that keynote speech. And

18:47

I'm like, oh yeah, now this is exactly your rhythm and

18:49

inflections. And then subsequent ones, I'm

18:51

like, oh yeah, no, this is like sitting

18:53

down to have a conversation.

18:54

My newsletters are profoundly ungrammatical,

18:57

which is very funny. And I use repetition

18:59

a lot in them stylistically. And it's because

19:01

that is how I talk, especially when I'm lecturing, especially

19:03

when I'm like speaking in front of a crowd, or

19:07

even on the pot or whatever. So yeah,

19:09

it's nice to hear that it is reflective of

19:12

of how I think and talk so much. I

19:14

want to circle back to something you said earlier,

19:17

which did at

19:19

risk of

19:21

at risk of unduly waiting

19:23

this, this might be a good point upon which to

19:25

close. And that is that when you

19:27

said you have friends who are editors who

19:29

read this and who like what you say, if you

19:32

are a writer, you

19:34

want an agent who is friends

19:37

with a lot of editors, because

19:39

what you are paying the agent for is to

19:41

put your work in front of as many editors as

19:44

possible in as positive a light

19:46

as possible

19:47

to put it in front of the right editors.

19:50

And that is, I mean,

19:52

that's, that's the bread and butter of

19:54

the job that you really do. And the fact

19:56

that this newsletter is,

19:58

is getting you

20:00

more attention from editors

20:03

is good for your clients,

20:05

present and future. Well, and one thing is I

20:07

used to be on that side of the table. I was

20:09

an editor at Big Five House. I have a lot of understanding

20:12

and empathy of what they go through. And so

20:14

I think my newsletter is a little bit of framing

20:16

that as well. I want to be clear

20:19

though, that there are other ways to be an agent, right?

20:21

There's a mode of agenting that is much more

20:23

antagonistic and much more hostile to the publisher

20:26

that isn't necessarily a bad way to go about it,

20:28

right? They get projects because they're big projects

20:30

because they're big agents. It's a different

20:33

way of interacting. It's more old school,

20:35

quite frankly. It can also be really effective.

20:38

It's not how I do business. It's not just who I am

20:40

as a person. And so

20:43

part of me doing the newsletter is making

20:45

clear this is my approach. Not that I

20:47

think other approaches are wrong. It's

20:49

not how I want to do things. But

20:53

yeah, again, it's really a way for me to

20:56

express to the world, whether that's writers,

20:58

whether that's my peers, whether that's people I want to work

21:00

with,

21:02

who I am as a person and how I want to be doing

21:04

business.

21:05

So thank you for taking

21:08

the time with me to dive into talking about how

21:10

publishing is hard. Dan,

21:13

I believe you have our homework. Yeah, we have

21:15

actually a two-part homework for you today,

21:18

dear listener. We want you to subscribe

21:21

to a couple of newsletters. They're

21:23

a very valuable thing. They're common in the industry.

21:26

We want you to seek out two with the following

21:29

criteria. Number one, find a creator that you

21:31

really like who has a newsletter

21:33

and subscribe to it. Number

21:35

two, possibly

21:38

and maybe ideally with that same creator,

21:41

find a newsletter that person

21:43

subscribes to and subscribe

21:45

to it as well. Because then you get a sense not

21:47

only of what they are putting out into the world, but what

21:50

they are absorbing, what the creators you love

21:52

are reading and interacting with.

21:57

In the next episode of Writing Excuses, we'll

21:59

talk about branding. personal identity, and

22:01

why Dolly Parton can never have a bad day. Until

22:04

then, you're out of excuses. Now

22:06

go write. Writing

22:09

excuses has been brought to you by our listeners,

22:11

patrons, and friends. For this episode,

22:14

your hosts were Mary Robinette Kowal,

22:16

Dong Won Song, Aaron Roberts, Dan

22:18

Wells, and Howard Taylor. This episode

22:21

was engineered by Marshall Carr Jr., mastered

22:24

by Alex Jackson, and produced by Emma

22:26

Reynolds. For more information, visit

22:28

writingexcuses.com. www.mooji.org