Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Bookends YouTube channel. I'm James McGowan.

Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Jessica Faust.

Speaker 1: This is my first video with my new standing desk, so I'm just wobbling around.

Speaker 2: It's swaying everywhere.

Speaker 1: There you have it. It's better than the squeak of the chair.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a leaner when we do the videos.

Speaker 1: Oh, my desk shakes a little, so if I lean, we get that. Oh, okay. Sorry if I just made anybody seasick.

Speaker 2: We are standing desk fans.

Speaker 1: Yeah, we are. I was just telling Mo Farah, I will never go back, I don't think.

Speaker 2: No, I never will.

Speaker 1: And you had said when I first got it, you were like, you'll find that you're standing more and more as you go on, and I stand most of the day. Yeah. I get bored.

Speaker 2: When I used to do it, I would stool and stand and stool and stand. Mine is permanent standing. My desk doesn't go up and down. But now I just got to the point where if I want to sit, I just go to my chair. I don't even really stool. I don't stool.

Speaker 1: Just get away from the desk in general. Yeah.

Speaker 3: Don't stool.

Speaker 1: Okay. Anyway, this is not a video on standing desk. Thank you for entertaining that. But we are talking today. Did we do our whole introduction?

Speaker 3: Who cares? Let's not do it today.

Speaker 1: We know who we are.

Speaker 3: You know who we are.

Speaker 1: Okay. But today we want to talk a little bit about how successful authors build slash maintain their publishing relationships. So it's one thing to get a book deal. Right. But I think. Part of being successful in publishing is building strong relationships with the people that are making your book. It takes a village, right? Like it's, you have a whole team. You have a whole team of people that are making your book. And all of those people are going to be communicating with you at some point.

Speaker 2: And how can we make those relationships ones that are not just one book, right? Like, how can we keep building them? Yeah. Yeah. And I think that often it's pretty easy to build with your agent. And important too, because I, you know, I think it's really important to have a consistent person on your team. Editors move. You might switch publishing houses. You might be writing at multiple publishing houses.

Speaker 1: Your agent will be that one constant who you always go back with.

Speaker 2: And. Pardon. Who knows everything.

Speaker 1: Or we'll find out.

Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sorry. Who knows everything about your career? Yes. Yes. Yeah. That relationship starts from that first phone call with that first offer of representation. I mean, I guess it starts with the query. But when it really starts and you connect is that first phone call and you build from there. Yeah. And then, and then the same thing happens when you get an editor. And then as the team builds up from there. So.

Speaker 1: So the most important thing I think we both agree with. I think it's important to have a consistent person on your team. Not just as an agent, but with everybody involved. I think. You know, There's so much that's going on for every book. And the only way that everybody can really be involved and track things. And be on top of things. Is if you're communicating. And if you're having those conversations, if you have concerns, if you have an issue, if you want something to be done, I think it's important to have that person on your team. And that's what we're talking about. I mean, we're talking about the power ball numbers, but we have to. We have to communicate what's going on and you have to do that with us. We have to do it back to you. So.

Speaker 2: Open communication is a crucial, really for any relationship, but in publishing is what we're talking about. So. Yeah. One of the things I see, for example, as authors set up. Their own publicity or marketing, right? Maybe they'll decide they want to do something fancy with the cover or something like that. But if you're not communicating that to your team, it means your sales force can't. Call the bookstore to get them to order more books. And it means that they can't go, Hey, I didn't know you were going to be in that area. This other bookstore might want to see you, or we actually have an event over here. And since you're open to doing events, this could happen. Like the more you communicate, the more everybody else will communicate.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And publishing lives in the wonderful world of email, which means that. A lot of communication is via email. A lot of emails are flying back and forth. And sometimes people get left off emails. As an agent, I'm inclined to believe that we're probably left off emails most frequently. But if you're talking with your publishing team and something is going on and we're left off the email, we have no way of knowing that. So if you run up against an issue or something like that, or you just want to share something and celebrate. Yeah.

Speaker 2: And that's a good way to get us in the loop too. Yeah. There's there are a few things more frustrating than when an author, I will tell you, hands down. My biggest frustration is when an author approves their cover.

Speaker 3: And I never saw it.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And then I see the cover. And then I say, oh, And the author goes, yeah, I don't really love it. But you. Proved it. And we could have had a whole conversation to fix it. But now we can't. I think that sometimes what I ask my authors to do is. Just don't answer yet. Like if your editor calls you and says, we want to do another book with you. Great. Come through your agent. That's what I'm here for, to be your team member. To have these conversations, to say what's right for your career. What's right for your book. If you're not happy. We can discuss why. You know, maybe my response is. Well, I get it, but it's a great cover. Or maybe my response is you're right. Let me talk to your editor about it and see what we can do. Which is usually my response.

Speaker 1: Yeah. But also those conversations are. Crucial to like the thought process too. Right. So if you get an email and you're, I'm not sure about this, but you were rattled off a response. You've not given yourself the time to think about it. And you've also not given other people the chance who are on your team. And like, our job is to advocate for our clients. So I think by keeping the communication open. You're expanding the timeline a bit, right. To really digest everything, but you're also giving. Any decision, the room to be fought through. And to be decided upon what's the best. Response or plan of action.

Speaker 2: You know, it's funny. I'm sorry. What's funny is how often an editor will send something over. To an agent. And they need the author and agent to go. I hate this. Can we fix it? Because they can only do so much, but if they get the support of us, but they can't always, they can't email it to us and go, I hate this. Please tell me you hate it so I can fight. About it. They need to know we hate it so that they can go back and fight for it.

Speaker 1: That's part of sort of the teamwork of the whole thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2: And it allows for brainstorming, right? Like we do it at bookends all the time when we are like, what do you think about this? Or I have this conundrum. Can I get some help with it? And that's what you're getting with your agent and even your editor, like I'm having a plot point problem. Yeah.

Speaker 1: Thank you so much. And I think we all, we're all so excited when we're excited about something, telling them. But it's also feedback too. It's feedback to say this worked for me. This went great. This is what I need to do more. All of that is really helpful. So. Yeah. Yeah. I completely agree. Another thing that. Authors are doing, they're meeting their deadlines. And it feels. we can find for you and link below, but you have to meet your deadlines.

Speaker 2: And if you're not, be upfront and honest about it.

Speaker 1: If you're not, you have to communicate that.

Speaker 2: Communicate. There is, it's one thing when an author meets a deadline, right? But as we discussed in the other video, it happens. At some point in your career, you will miss a deadline. You just will. Life happens. The worst are the authors who can't honestly communicate that, and they either go dark and they're just ghosting everybody, or there's this repeated story of next week, next week, next week, and now it's six weeks later and nobody believes you. And now they want to cancel the book where if they'd known ahead of time, six weeks, here's what's going on. Everybody can plan their lives, right?

Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yep. Okay. The third thing is remaining open to revisions and changing things in your book, on your cover, in your cover copy, in your author bio, really anything. It's very hard to work with somebody who is rigid, especially in a creative field, especially when we're talking about books that have so many moving parts and pieces. Not, we're not saying that you have to be willing to change everything, but you have to be open to hearing suggestions and changes and reasoning and having that discussion. And I think you would be surprised by what you'd be willing to change if you just remain open. Yeah. You'd be surprised by what can better the overall book package and your career if you remain open to those conversations.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I never want anyone to make a revision to their book, for example, that they absolutely disagree with. However, I think there's one important question to ask, and that's why. If I ask an author, you need to change the scene or this character, and you are like, no, I love it. Ask me why. Why do you think it needs to be changed? Because my answer from the perspective of a reader might make you shift your thinking of, okay, maybe it's not your suggestion that I need to change it too. But now that I see why you think it needs to be changed or it's not working, I can make a change.

Speaker 1: Because there's a famous writing quote that's like somebody tells, I forgot who said it, but if somebody tells you how to change something, they're almost always wrong. If somebody tells you that something's not working, they're almost always right.

Speaker 2: Right. And a lot of times when people tell you how to change something, it's because the original wasn't working for them, at least from an editorial perspective. Anytime I tell somebody, give a suggestion on how I think it should be changed, it's because the current way it's writing is not working. And if it doesn't work for me, consistently, it usually doesn't work for editors and readers. I'm not saying I'm perfect. I'm just saying that consistently all readers will see the same problem or a similar problem.

Speaker 1: Right. So I think we actually ended up over-talking in our first bullet point and talking about this one. But understanding the collaboration of covers, cover copy, marketing plans, as we were talking about before, having your agent and your editor and having the discussion about what's working for you, what's not working for you, letting things sit and marinate a bit, all of that is a collaboration. Like I said, it takes a village. There are so many people that are lending their voice to the decisions that are being made about the packaging of your book and also your revisions too. So understanding that, that it's not a decision you alone have to make or get to make, is really, really important.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And I think again, the why. If your publisher comes to you with cover copy or a cover that's really different from what you had envisioned, and maybe you had even submitted some ideas, ask them why they decided to go in this direction. What are their thoughts? I have often seen authors have a very clear idea of what they want for the book, but the way the publisher feels that they can best market and sell that book or what they know about upcoming books and how everybody has something like that coming or a marketing plan that matches that, and they don't want to just be the fifth in line for the same event. Sometimes there's a real reason for that. I think that just as we need to respect that this is the author's book and they are the creative experts, I think authors also need to see the experts at publishers as the creative experts. I have a lot of opinions about covers, but I am not a designer.

Speaker 1: This is actually one of our next bullet points too. Understand your role in the whole process. Your role as the author, you have created the book, but now we have cover designers who are professionals who are, like Jessica said, doing their version of market research where they're seeing what covers are selling, what people are buying in bookstores and sales departments. They're doing that work. They know what's going to work. They're thinking of the treatment and the packaging of your book. You have a sales team and a marketing team that are doing this day in and day out, and that's not to say that we can ever challenge or discuss and try better things, but also knowing that you might not always, unless you are, you might not always be the expert in that portion of book production and sales. Knowing that you also have a lot to learn, we still have a lot to learn, but you have a lot to learn and your role in the process is not to redesign the cover or to write your own marketing plan and things like that. Knowing where you stand and where you fit into the whole puzzle of making a book.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a team, like any team. You can always tell a good sports team, everybody stays on sides. The minute everybody starts playing everybody else's position, I can guarantee a loss.

Speaker 1: Yeah, just pandemonium.

Speaker 2: One of the things I want to say about this understanding the role, which is slightly off track, but Emily Forney once said about reviews, that reviews are not for the authors, reviews are for the readers. And I think so much about the creation of the book is not about you as the author, it's about the readers and what the readers are going to gravitate towards. And so in creating a book cover, it's not always about creating something that looks exactly like what your vision of how it looked in the book, but it's creating the enticing and appealing version of that that will appeal to readers. So if you put a dog on the cover, and it doesn't exactly match the dog in the book, the important thing is, is it a dog that will appeal to book buyers? Because that's what you want to do.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm really glad you said that too, because I think there's so much that gets pulled into this process of like, this is how it has to be. But at the end of the day, we're business people, we're trying to sell a product and what is going to sell the product, sometimes it's just better for the product. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. Okay, ask questions. I'm a notorious question asker. So I think you should always be asking questions. But if you're unsure of something in your contract about a term that your editor is using, like Jessica was saying, somebody wants you to change something, ask why, ask what is that? How can I be doing this better? If you're unsure of how your role will fit in marketing, in any process, ask those questions. If there's ever an inkling of a doubt in your brain, something that you're not sure of, ask the question, ask your agent or whoever is the most appropriate contact for that question. Ask them. The best thing you can do in this process, I think one of the best ways you can build relationships is to be informed. Because when you are informed, then you know your role, you know how to remain open, you know how to communicate all those things that we're mentioning. Yeah, you have to be informed in order to do so. If you're not informed, ask the question, get yourself informed about any specific question or topic that you're unsure about.

Speaker 2: Yeah, especially when you're starting out and everything is so new. I mean, I always think that is probably one of my important most important jobs is to answer those questions and explain the business as we go along. And it's not just that first book, you know, your next book deal is going to be different from your first book deal. So there's going to be different questions.

Speaker 1: And forget the idea of being a bother. I don't want to ask another question. My agent, I asked the question last week, ask the question. Yeah. So, okay, our final one, which I think kind of sums everything up, but give each book everything, right? Like this is a product, this is something your name is going on. Give it your all, make sure it's the best it can be. Make sure your marketing plan, everything that you're doing is the best that you can do. I think the only person who's going to directly benefit from it is you. Well, not the only person, but one of the most important people who's going to directly benefit from it is you. And this is your career. So

Speaker 2: invest yourself in it. Your most important job is writing a book and getting bogged down, which is sort of goes back to the collaboration idea. All of these people are part of your team getting bogged down in everybody else's jobs or Twitter drama or whatever it else you tend to get bogged down on. Instead of writing that book takes you out. It's sort of like if the chef at a restaurant suddenly starts focusing on front of the house, well, who's actually cooking the food? You know, if I'm so focused on table settings that nobody's cooking the food, then the food's going to stink and nobody's going to come back to the restaurant because the most important thing about that restaurant is the food.

Speaker 1: Yeah. But also as publishing professionals, we want to work with people who are doing that, right? We want to work with people who are invested in this as a career, who want to make each book an enjoyable and easy and a successful process. So I think that's like you were saying before, Jessica, that's one of the best ways to make your team want to do more books with you, just being a good team member. 100%. Yep. So we hope this was helpful. That's our little short list of things that we think everybody can incorporate into their publishing career in general. So don't forget to like and subscribe. Thanks for watching. And we'll see you back here next week.

Speaker 2: And just remember one last thing to send you home with. Your success as an author is also everybody else's success in their job. So everybody wants this to succeed as much as you do. That's it. That's all I got.

Speaker 1: Mic drop moment.

Speaker 2: Have a good one, everyone.