…ft. Alexander Darwin
Show Notes
- Being a hybrid author
- How SPFBO works and can benefit indie authors
- Paying for publicity (via Black Crow) in the UK specifically
- Collaborative efforts with Orbit on marketing/publicity in the USA
- Book Tours (an assessment and reflection)
- Finding an angle for pubs to use
- Thinking about longterm goals
- LitRPGs and why they remain indie
- Theories about the goal of OrbitWorks (digital only imprints)
- Chatter about jujitsu and other nonsense
Links
Transcripts (by Sunyi Dean)
[00:00:00.000] – Sunyi
Hi, I’m Sunyi Dean.
[00:00:03.000] – Scott
And I’m Scott Drakeford.
[00:00:05.840] – Sunyi
And this is the Publishing Radio podcast. In 2022, we both launched debut novels in the same genre with the same publisher in the same year. But despite having very similar starts, our books, and subsequently each for our careers, went in very different directions.
[00:00:20.700] – Scott
That pattern repeats itself throughout the industry over and over. Why do some books succeed while others seem to be dead on arrival?
[00:00:29.850] – Sunyi
In this podcast, we aim to answer this questions and many more, along with how to build and maintain an author career.
[00:00:38.090] – Scott
Everyone signing a contract deserves to know what they’re really signing up for. In an industry that loves its secrets, we’ll be sharing real details from real people. We’ll cover the gamut of life as a Big Five published author, from agents to publishing contracts, finances, and more.
[00:01:00.050] – Sunyi
Welcome to Publishing Radio. We have with us this week Alexander Darwin, who’s, I guess, would you say, a hybrid author? You started out indie, you moved to trad, and that’s a whole journey in itself. And I first encountered his books as someone who’s writing the way it’s marketed, like jiu-jitsu science fantasy. And that was really interesting to me because at the time I’d started jiu-jitsu, which I don’t know, we’ll almost certainly end up talking about that sport later in this episode. But if you want Can you introduce yourself, Alex, that’d be fantastic.
[00:01:32.980] – Alex Darwin
Yeah, thanks, Annie. Good to see you, you and Scott. I think hybrid is an apt term. I like hybrid. Why not? Why pick a camp? Have the flexibility to go either way. If you want to. But you did a great job describing combat codes. Is my first debut series, which was originally self-published and subsequently picked up by Orbit Books. At this point, the The first two books in the series are released, combat codes in Gríevar’s blood, and the third book is due out in December of 2024. The basic premise is a world where wars have been replaced with single un armed combat duels between champions, and the outcome of these duels determined the fate of nations. So essentially a new political system, which I often wish we had in real life, whether it’s feasible or not.
[00:02:30.290] – Scott
Does the US have any UFC champions right now? Would we end up on top of that?
[00:02:41.980] – Alex Darwin
I think we do all right. Yeah. I mean, Jon Jones just got arrested, I think, so he’s probably not in the mix. Again. Yeah.
[00:02:51.060] – Sunyi
Do I remember right? You told me you actually got film interest first. You came at Trad Publishing totally circumnavigating backwards, sideways.
[00:03:02.550] – Alex Darwin
Yeah. I mean, the more I listen to podcasts like yours, it seems like the route of authors, whether it be finding an agent or an editor in Trad, is not as straightforward as it appears, or maybe it’s just outliers that are coming on to podcasts and telling their stories. But yeah, the combat codes did well in Mark Lawrence’s SPFBO or SPIFBO, depending on how you’d like to pronounce that contest, which is- Can I ask real quick?
[00:03:33.920] – Scott
I’m so sorry to interrupt, but because you’re going back to that stage in your story, can I ask how you came to enter in that? Did you query and try for Trad first and then decide to do that, or did you just go straight for SFPBO or whatever the hell the acronym is?
[00:03:51.300] – Alex Darwin
Yeah. I feel like I’m not only a discovery writer, but a discovery person in life where I just… I don’t know if it’s just wandering upon stuff. But I was in San Francisco, living in San Francisco, and had a startup, essentially, a failed startup. It was on the way out, and we were trying to figure out what to do with our lives. I was like, I’ve always been a fantasy sci-fi reader. I wrote the first iteration of the combat codes, and I didn’t even know what trad publishing was. I didn’t even know anything. The fact that you could get an agent, I had zero knowledge. But I did know that there was something called Amazon KDP because I had been in that world of tech. I thought, this must be the way that you put a book out there because in the world of startups, it makes sense that something like this would work. I just learned that world and, again, didn’t even understand that there was another option at that point, which obviously now is very naive. On a whim, the book had done all right, but I had primarily pushed it towards jiu-jitsu folks, which I’m Sonye and you know is a very small niche.
[00:05:03.260] – Alex Darwin
I mean, it’s growing, but people that actually practice like, Brazilian jiu-jitsu. So I pushed it towards them, and it did well in that niche.
[00:05:11.180] – Scott
I don’t see that being a big leading group.
[00:05:15.930] – Alex Darwin
Exactly. The audiobook clearly must sell better. But I saw on a whim, I was on Reddit or something and saw that there was this SPFBO contest. I think it was In the third or fourth year where Mark Lawrence every year runs it for self-published fantasy sci-fi authors, or fantasy authors. Then they have judges come in. There’s 300 original entrants, and then they whittle it down to semi-finalists, and then a final 10 that duke it out. And there’s a winner every year. Again, I wasn’t planning on entering. I just saw it somewhere and threw it in the mix.
[00:05:55.230] – Sunyi
You’re talking about it being a little bit the small readership group. I remember when my instructor found out that I write books. He probably told me he’d never read more than one book in his whole adult life when he’s 48. I think there are probably about two people in my whole school who read regularly.
[00:06:12.590] – Alex Darwin
Yes. You need to get I’ll send an audiobook to them, Sonia. I bet they listen to podcasts, so that might be a better bet.
[00:06:20.980] – Sunyi
I did find out later that he listens to audiobooks. He just didn’t really think of it as reading. I was like, No, I get royalties for audiobooks. It’s reading.
[00:06:28.900] – Scott
Hey, I did see, though, Alex, that you got Ryan Hall. And God, who else was it that blurbed your book? Kenny Florian. Okay, yeah. I mean, that’s awesome. That’s legit. I remember watching Ryan’s season of the Ultimate fighter. Yeah.
[00:06:47.060] – Alex Darwin
I’ve met him a few times. He’s a very interesting, good guy. He’s very analytical, super technical, as you can imagine. A great representative of jiu-jitsu. He would look like a nerd on the street, and then he’s like some… I guess that’s his nickname, the Wizard, which also is apt for SFF fans.
[00:07:08.440] – Scott
Yes, it is.
[00:07:09.050] – Sunyi
The other question I was going to quickly ask you in this sense from SFPL. It was created to celebrate self-published novels, but increasingly it feels like a pipeline to convert soft pub to trad. And I just wondered if you had thoughts on that particularly or not really.
[00:07:24.550] – Alex Darwin
I think there has been a uptick. I know There’s definitely been a handful. And for sure, I know editors at the big SFF imprints, Orbit and Tor, and a few others, hang out or used to, at some point, hang out and follow the winners and read some of that. I think one of the first ones to get picked up was Gray Bastards. Gray Bastards about the orcs that ride warhogs. Oh, the pigs, yeah. I think that got picked up by Ballant or Macmillan, I want to say. And then one of the big ones was Josiah Bancroft, Senlin. That got picked up. And that was not even… So my book made it into the finals. It did not win. But I think Senlin, excuse me, was not even in the… It was like semifinals, and Marc Lawrence really liked it and pushed it, and it eventually got picked up by Orbit.
[00:08:25.740] – Sunyi
Last Give’s the Universe. I think I just finished blurbing that one because I actually read it when Rory self-published it, and they put it through Sifo and ended up getting editor interest and then pick you up an agent, and now it’s coming out trad.
[00:08:39.630] – Alex Darwin
Well, it makes a lot of sense because in essence, the judges, they have so many rounds of judges and bloggers, and it’s also getting a bunch of hype to start off that editors would be sifting through that material because there’s a lot of pre-marketing research being done there, essentially, that then doesn’t need to be done.
[00:09:00.840] – Scott
Yeah, it’s basically a bunch of focus groups that Trad wishes they could do anyway, so it makes a lot of sense.
[00:09:06.790] – Alex Darwin
I think I’ve heard of stories, though, where some of these self-pub books that are really taking off. I mean, combat codes got to a point after Spiffbo where it was doing… It got a bump from Spiffbo and it was selling, but by no means did I expect it. It already had the first trajectory with the very small jiu-jitsu audience, and then it got the SFF audience. But still, If I didn’t put my own resources into it at that point, it would have eventually fizzled. In that industry, you have to keep really producing at a high rate to be successful. I saw it as a great opportunity when Orbit made the offer. I do know for a fact that a lot of self-published authors over the years have turned down trad if they’re in that upper echelon of their support. What do I still want is to be able to support myself writing. I haven’t gotten to that point yet, and that’s still on my bucket list. With three kids in a mortgage, that’s a tall order, as you can imagine. I don’t have any illusions of… That would require quite a bit. I’m fine doing what I’m doing because it takes some of the pressure off of writing.
[00:10:19.180] – Alex Darwin
But whether you’re self-bub or trad and you’re paying your bills and that’s your main income, that’s a bucket list/dream to be able to So when you got into Trad, I guess it’s a very general question, but how did you find the experience?
[00:10:36.090] – Sunyi
Because the thing that we are building up to is I know that you did a lot of work yourself with, I guess, your marketing background and your soft pub background to try and boost that debut and to try lots of different things. And hopefully you’ve had, I guess, time to see what’s worked and what hasn’t and what you would maybe do again.
[00:10:53.420] – Scott
Well, and how quickly did you go from SFPBO, or I probably keep butchering that. But how How quickly did you go from that contest to the Orbit deal?
[00:11:03.830] – Alex Darwin
It was one or two years, at least. It all is a blur because it was 2020, it was COVID. It was COVID when Spifbo, during that year, it takes a year for the contest to cycle through a little bit less because they have multiple rounds of judging. Then it was a whole another year until Orbit made an official offer. Then as you know, how long traditional publishing takes, how slow things go. It wasn’t another two years until here we are. The combat codes wasn’t published until June of 2023, so less than a year ago. So that’s obviously a good question. I have come equipped I hope that debut authors listening that are either going from self-pub to trad because I know that’s a lot more common now than it used to be, or just starting in trad can take some wisdom from my experimentation. And there’s definitely pluses and minuses in me having, I think, going into trad, having a self-pub mindset, which I’ve always thought like that, being, whether it be startups or putting my own book out there, I’ve always not really tried to rely too much on other people. So I really did what I could.
[00:12:24.440] – Alex Darwin
And I think there are some things that were successful and some that were not successful on my part. And so hopefully I can help out people and give some guidance moving forward. So, yeah, I mean, I could jump into that. I don’t want to just list stuff off. So whatever you guys think.
[00:12:42.300] – Sunyi
You signed with Orbit. What did Orbit say they were going to do for you? Or rather, let’s focus on what did Orbit do for you? And then were there areas where you’re looking at it thinking, Oh, this is something I can take over and do myself faster, better, more specifically?
[00:12:58.700] – Alex Darwin
Yeah. So unfortunately, I was not so strategic in my carrying out of various marketing efforts. I came upon them as I saw them and went after them. As far as what, I got a pretty good advance. I do feel like Orbit put some good marketing effort behind the book. I’ve listened to a lot as far as the importance of physical arcs, and they really did put out a lot of arcs. Now, that’s actually my first point on the physical arts end is, I think for what would be considered mid-list books, as far as Orbit goes, it seems like they do put out physical arts. But I always felt that even in the mixed martial arts, martial arts fans, like the UFC fans, even though we know the readership is not that high, I still felt like there was a big segment of that population that I didn’t have the ability to reach out to. And so I Basically, what I did is created a pretty in-depth spreadsheet, and I did a bunch of research. Don’t forget, I also through selfPub. It’s not like I was starting from scratch. I had already a lot of connections within the blogger world.
[00:14:16.920] – Alex Darwin
There was people, whether it be Booktubers or Bookchalkers or influencers that I, right off the bat, knew that I wanted to get an art to. Again, this is not me just randomly listing people, I had to put in the legwork to assist Orbit and the PR team to get books out to the people that I thought would be most influential. If I had to highlight one thing that’s going to be the most, if your publisher is sending out physical arcs, I would say that was probably the most important, slash what moved books the best of anything I did, just being able to have some control. Because I think basically, especially as far as midlist goes, a publisher, a big five publisher will typically… They have their contacts. They have bloggers that they work with and they’re regularly sending advanced copies to. I think they will put an effort to figure out which bloggers might vibe with your book better. But based on just the amount of time that these great people have, I have a great relationship with the PR person Angela at Orbit, who did a fantastic job. Again, but at the end of the day, we all know everyone in publishing is spread so thin, and they only have so much bandwidth that they can use for every author.
[00:15:43.740] – Alex Darwin
I think it actually was a big… Whether or not I created more work for people, I don’t know. Probably, maybe. But I think it really, from my point of view, was helpful because I saw end of the day, that a lot of the people that I ended up listing, and they had no problem sending sending arcs out to that fairly extensive list that I created. Again, I think I did that legwork because it’s not like I went on to TikTok. I’m done with TikTok at this point, but up until When I launched, I was able to build maybe 10,000 followers, which was not too bad. I was on there a lot for that lead up, and I was doing research on which Booktok influencers would most like the combat codes. I I was collecting information. I was going to websites, finding. I was doing all the legwork in the spreadsheet, finding addresses. Because to mail something, you have to think about the logistics of mailing. If you’re mailing outside of the US, you need phone numbers associated with it. You need the names, obviously, mailing addresses. Again, I pretty much put together this big spreadsheet of the people both within the SFF here, as well as the martial arts world, as well as whatever else I thought might be useful.
[00:17:00.020] – Alex Darwin
I did end up, post-facto, end up seeing a lot of these people that got it and then reviewed it. I think, especially now, those circles, those spheres like Booktube and Booktok. We could talk about Twitter, I don’t think Twitter really does move the needle much, as I think you guys probably would agree. But those are BookTube and Booktok. So YouTube, the book community on there, and then Booktok, those are really fairly influential, in my opinion. Some of those people have, I don’t want to say millions, but maybe millions of followers, Booktube, hundreds of thousands of viewers, and they really take their recommendations quite seriously, and they use them given how much content there is now and how hard it is to find your next read. I think they use these people as guides for what they’re going to read. If they like a book, or even if they don’t like it, to be honest, and they just put it out there and say what it’s about, That’s going to move some books. Of anything, I’ve looked back at the year and all the things I’ve done, and we can talk about some of that, some of the other things that I thought worked and didn’t work.
[00:18:10.670] – Alex Darwin
I think if your publisher is actually sending out physical arcs, that I think is a really big deal if you can help them out, assist them. I know not everyone has the bandwidth to put that effort in. But again, I was starting from a good I have a marketing business, and then also… So I had the flexibility to be able to allocate that time and the resources, and then also be coming from self-pub, this is what you do. In self-pub, you have to scrap. This is everything you do. So it’s like, this was just what I would do anyways. I didn’t really know any other way to do it. I think that did create a little bit of stress for me, personally, looking back on it, not having the control that Going from self-pub, again, that’s the real dilemma. Should I do self-pub? Should I do trad? If you have a choice, if you want to do self-pub, do you want to run your own business? Do you want to put in all the resources to do that? Do you want to have no support, really, outside of yourself? Then maybe you can do that.
[00:19:21.970] – Alex Darwin
And then obviously, the benefit of trad is having perhaps a wider reach as well as a team to work behind you, and you, ideally long term being able to just write, which still is my ultimate goal, which would be nice. I like some of the marketing stuff, but it’s also a little bit stressful for me. And so that initial scrap mentality of self-pub, I I think did clash a little bit at the start. Okay, now there’s a whole team working with me and there’s limitations and resources. There’s only a finite amount of resources available. So all of that played into it.
[00:19:57.720] – Sunyi
Yeah, I was nodding long as you were saying that, because I think Like even if you were trying to focus this year on things that people can do to help themselves, because having spent all of last year saying, Very little you do matters, I think actually it is more nuanced than that. And that sometimes you don’t always know what works. Nothing is guaranteed, but you often don’t know until you try. And I’m not as organized as you were, but I did definitely, I think in the ramp to my debut, I’d go on social media, I’d see someone saying, I really want this arc of the book readers, but I can’t get it. I wasn’t improved for Netgalley. I didn’t win the giveaway. And I would reach out to them and it because I had arcs for my publisher or I had early author copies that I could send. For me, that was a good use of my time and money. I wasn’t even necessarily doing research. I still probably shifted over 100 copies doing that, I think, close to. I mean, TikTok. I’m interested to hear why you left it if you feel like talking into it, because I think I was on TikTok for a bit until I found this influencer who had about twice as many followers as I have sales to date.
[00:20:55.700] – Sunyi
I did my book and I was just like, I’m going to call up here and never come back.
[00:21:01.290] – Alex Darwin
Yeah, no, I totally understand that. Yeah, TikTok, I was like, Okay, this is a big thing. In the year up to my book launching, I’m going to try to do what I can. And so I went after it and I built the following. At first, I think it was mainly martial arts because I was posting videos of fights and doing commentary, just whatever. And then eventually, I was transitioning more towards books. I was just trying to figure out catchy things. I was taking two books together and smushing them together to become one book with editing. That was a hit. One of those videos got 200,000 views and and expose combat codes. I don’t know how… The tough thing with all of this that is frustrating, especially coming from a marketing background, is being on the author side, you really have zero data as far as what’s working, and you can’t really track your efforts very well. You have to shoot in the dark to some extent, but you have a gut feeling of what’s working and what’s not to some extent as well. Tiktok was just being on it, it just wasn’t… I’ve largely moved off Twitter at this point.
[00:22:17.240] – Alex Darwin
Not really as… I mean, it’s just the brain drain of all these things I was seeing, affecting my mental health and preventing me from actually writing, which is… I I tend to get super obsessive about things, and so I would just be like, I’m marketing, I’m marketing, I’m marketing. And then I wouldn’t be actually writing, which is what I want to be doing. Again, like end of the day, marketing is what I do for a living right now, but I would rather be writing. That’s why I’m here in the first place.
[00:22:49.220] – Sunyi
If I stay on Twitter, it’s a matter of time before I end up in jail for murder. And then that’s basically why I need to just step back.
[00:22:56.770] – Scott
I was just going to comment that I think that That union of author effort and publisher effort is really good to see, right? And you handing a list of targeted reviewers, influencers, whatever, and your publisher actually going after that is pretty amazing. I haven’t heard of that happening for a lot of people, which is awesome. Well, it’s not awesome, but it’s awesome that they did that for you. And my The question on the back of that is, I’m just curious. Sonja said she sent out maybe 100 ARCs on her own. I know her publisher’s sent out a bunch. I didn’t get ARCs at all, but I sent out finished copies to probably ballpark 100 people. I’m curious if you know how many ARCs Orbit sent out at your request versus not at your request and total, what that effort looked like.
[00:23:55.530] – Alex Darwin
I’m not aware of the total amount. I guess I never asked them the amount. I do know that outside of the list I provided there, because I’ve seen the book end up in a bunch of other hands outside of the book, I think my list was maybe 50, 60 people. It was a pretty decent-sized list. Then, again, I don’t know specifically how many they sent out outside of this. I’m just talking about the US. The book was bought by both the Orbit US as well as UK, and I had a lot more interaction interface with the US team. I think that’s half the battle in the beginning, especially. This is something I had to adapt to. I’m not saying this was a smooth process, and I was just like, The book was acquired, and I wasn’t stressed at all because I was certainly stressed. You’re looking at what other authors are getting, and you’re feeling like, is this fair? Is this not fair? But eventually, I feel like I hit my stride. A big part of it for me is the relationships. My relationship with my editor has always been really good. In the very beginning, the The only part that was stressful was it was acquired by an editor, and then she left publishing, essentially during that big exodus.
[00:25:08.750] – Alex Darwin
What was it in 2022 when a ton of editors were leaving? Then I got a new editor, which is always a little bit scary because this isn’t the person that acquired it, but it ended up working out really well. Those relationships with my editor, and actually with my PR contact at Orbit, ended up being really integral because I know different editors work in different ways. In some cases, an author might only be in contact with their editor, and the editor will serve as the liaison to everyone else. I think that still was the relationship and is the relationship. But just knowing that there was someone on the other end on the PR and the PR side of things, because again, I work with PR people in my day job, and I know how, even in other industries, how spread thin they are on everything. They’re getting requests from a thousand different angles. And so I think it’s really important, as passionate as you are about your book, and as much as this is your baby that you’ve been working so hard on, to at least acknowledge in your interactions with these people that you need to be not only polite, but realistic about what is possible and not possible.
[00:26:24.480] – Alex Darwin
At the same time, I think it’s important not to be afraid to ask. And I think I asked for a lot of things that I got to know and just being like, Okay, that it is what it is. It doesn’t hurt to ask for things. To go back to TikTok, any platform, I think if you have the ability to create some angle for your PR team to use. From a PR perspective, they’re pushing out a lot of books, and the books naturally have their own angles. They’re targeted towards certain audience. You have romantacy or you have a book that’s action-heavy, like combat codes. They’re I’m not going to be using those already. But if you can give them another specific angle to easily reach out to XYZ magazine, XYZ blogger, and say, Hey, I’ve got this for you. Do you want to run with it? What I did is I put together or I outsourced essentially a video. The combat codes, one of my big inspirations is old-school RPGs, like Final Fantasy. The world of the combat code is like science-fantasy, much some of those games where it’s a cross between technology and magic. I thought it would be cool to put together a video, an animation of the actual combat codes characters/story in old-school 2D pixelated Final Fantasy-esque graphics.
[00:27:46.870] – Alex Darwin
I put that together, took a risk because I was putting resources into this, and I didn’t know how Orbit would react, whether they’d be like, Okay, that’s stupid. Don’t just do that on your own, or whether they would be like, All right, that’s actually pretty cool. It turned out I put it together. I outsourced it, and I sent the animation to my editor, and he passed it around the team, and they were like, Actually, we have a ton of Final Fantasy fans on the team. They thought it was really cool. Then they were able to do what I would not be able to do because I’m not in the PR of this industry or any industry. They pushed it out to a bunch of resources. It ended up getting coverage from Gizmodo and had a whole piece from Gizmodo. That wouldn’t have been something that without that content I provided, they wouldn’t have been able to do that. They wouldn’t have been able to say, Here’s another book. Do you want to cover this? I think, again, providing something that they can use. I totally understand, based on bandwidth, based on resources, not everyone might be able to be able to do that.
[00:29:02.550] – Alex Darwin
But I wanted to take that angle.
[00:29:05.110] – Sunyi
I do think there’s merit as well in telling people that it’s not that everyone has to go and copy and do everything you did in the way you did it, that everyone can find their own place. I can’t have millions of followers on TikTok. I can’t be a star YouTuber. Some authors, they were really good at it. I definitely wouldn’t know where to start putting together a video, but I did a podcast. Do you ever play Blaze Blue? Is that a weird question?
[00:29:29.910] – Alex Darwin
I have not. No. What system was it on?
[00:29:33.070] – Sunyi
It’s a newer Friday game. Oh, my God. Don’t ask me these questions. I’m old. Like 3PS2? You guys are younger than me.
[00:29:41.030] – Alex Darwin
I’m remembering SNE NES and NES, like SEGA Genesis.
[00:29:47.160] – Scott
Oh, yeah. I started on those. We both turned 37 this year.
[00:29:53.630] – Alex Darwin
Okay, so you’re not that much younger than me, but I’m 40.
[00:29:56.880] – Sunyi
I mean, 40 is just over the hill.
[00:29:58.700] – Scott
Yeah, you’re old as shit. Sorry, man.
[00:30:01.120] – Alex Darwin
My body is broken. I actually got an MRI. This is a total off topic. I got an MRI recently. They said, your spine looks like that of an 80-year-old.
[00:30:13.790] – Scott
Oh, good.
[00:30:16.540] – Alex Darwin
Wearing terror from grappling.
[00:30:18.520] – Sunyi
My instructor went to Germany last year for a competition, and he came back and he was like, he couldn’t tell if his ankle’s broken or not because he got caught in a heel hook.
[00:30:29.120] – Alex Darwin
I would be worried about his knee, especially for a heel hook. The knee, yeah.
[00:30:33.140] – Sunyi
He and the other guy both had each other in a heel hook, and basically, his ankle gave out first. But anyway, he was like, I’m not going to get an X ray because it might tell me it’s broken, and then I’ll have to stop training. I was like, I don’t think that logic works.
[00:30:46.850] – Alex Darwin
Perfect logic.
[00:30:48.080] – Sunyi
He was tied it up and he kept going. And this is why jiu-jitsu people have broken bodies.
[00:30:52.730] – Alex Darwin
Yeah. Basically, when I get together and train now, we’re all just complaining about our backs and our elbows and hobbling around. It’s fun, though. Yeah.
[00:31:04.730] – Sunyi
I know this is, again, really off topic, but do you find that there are people your age still doing… Because I go to jiu-jitsu, right? And a lot of those guys are literally young I have to be my sons, just about. I’m one of the older people there, other than my instructor, who’s obviously ancient.
[00:31:23.350] – Alex Darwin
You know what? A lot of my training partners are in their 50s, and even I have some… They’re like my heroes. I tell in their 60s. Anthony Bourdaine didn’t start until he was 57. I was lucky enough to write a piece in Rolling Stone about him. He had an anonymous account on Reddit where he was posting about jiu-jitsu. He was so obsessed about it. But he didn’t start until he was 57. If you ever go on that, you can still find his username on Reddit. It’s like trademark Bourdaine writing. All he posts about is how his rib cage It feels like a box of triskets getting crunched because he’s so broken, but he can’t stop it because he’s addicted.
[00:32:07.920] – Scott
It is so fun.
[00:32:09.120] – Sunyi
I love it enough that something I picked up for self-defense classes has become a hobby, a very serious hobby, even though I’m not very good at it. I do think there’s a lot of value as a writer and having a hobby that has fucking nothing to do with publishing. It really clears your head. It’s very immediate and grounded and real. But definitely, for me, the size is an issue. I was complaining to Scott about this a couple of weeks ago. There’s this dude that I often get paired with or feel like I often get paired with him. He’s a really nice guy, right? But he weighs 110 kg, which is 240 pounds. So he’s got 110 pounds on me. He’s a boxer who also does jiu-jitsu. That’s not a fun fight. It’s a shit fight, and I hate it.
[00:32:50.690] – Alex Darwin
Yeah. And your chance of injury increases when you’re rolling against larger dudes. But you know what, Sonia? If you’re smaller, you get better, faster. That’s a problem with bigger guys is they have… Most of them, unless they’re freak athletes, they have a very hard time getting better at technique because they can’t turn off the strength.
[00:33:17.990] – Scott
They learn. Yeah, they lean too much on it.
[00:33:20.460] – Sunyi
To be fair, they see them through a lot.
[00:33:23.110] – Alex Darwin
Yeah. But then you run into this… Every once in a while, there’s a person that’s both extremely strong as well as very good at learning. And you’re like, You need to be stopped. You’re a monster.
[00:33:37.060] – Scott
So quickly, back to books.
[00:33:40.940] – Alex Darwin
I actually- I’m sorry. I diverted the podcast to a jiu-jitsu podcast. It was my ulterior motive.
[00:33:47.170] – Scott
I actually love jiu-jitsu as well, and I haven’t done it for a very long time, but I love, love, loved the years that I did do it. But I did want to ask, so you mentioned that you have book three of your trilogy coming out in December of this year, which, congrats, that’s huge to have an entire trilogy out. What then, right? So you’ve experienced Indy, you’ve experienced Trad, you’ve now got connections, presumably in both, you are a marketing expert in your own right. What are you writing next and what will you do with it? What are your plans?
[00:34:25.380] – Alex Darwin
So as of right now, I’m sticking with With Trad, that is the optimal experience, so to speak, for me, because of having three little kids and trying to keep a business afloat and just wanting to be… Again, the ultimate goal for me really is just to write. I know it seems like a far-fledged dream that Sonye is living, but I still will always strive for that because I know how much I like writing. I I think I have the same argument against AI. It’s like, why I like writing? Why would I stop writing? This is exactly what I like to do. I don’t care what anything else can do. But that’s the goal. Not to say that I think it’s really good to be able to have an ability to say, You know what? I spent all this time on a manuscript, and if it goes out the sub and doesn’t get picked up, then I could. I could if I wanted to pull the trigger on not putting it. I know sometimes you have manuscripts in and you could eventually sell them, but if I wanted to… And then if something does well, then we know that Trad is not adverse now to picking up self-up.
[00:35:40.360] – Alex Darwin
So it’s like, in my opinion, where I am right now in the hybrid world, it’s a no-brainer. But again, I would much rather go the Trad route. So the next one, I’m almost on sub, right on the precipice. My agent submitted almost complete manuscript to my editor because you need to submit to… Well, I don’t know if it’s built into every contract, but typically, as far as the contract works on- You’re right, a first refusal. Exactly. My editor, Bradley, will hopefully be looking in that. I’m excited. It’s like a divergence from… It’s still sci-fi, but it’s more in, I would say, a broader audience. Technothriller, akin to Michael Crichton, Late Crowd. Michael Crichton has always been one of my favorite authors, and it’s like an homage to. I’m excited for that one to go out. Then hopefully, whether or not Orbit picks it up, I’m not sure. If they don’t, then we have an opportunity to go wide, so to speak, and try to sell it elsewhere. Yeah, that’s awesome. Because that’s a new realm for me. I really haven’t been on… Even though my first book went from self-pub to trad, I haven’t been on traditional sub, so to before.
[00:37:00.540] – Sunyi
So if I can ask very quickly about your debut year. Again, just tell me if I’m asking things and you don’t want to discuss them, but I seem to remember you organized for basically a book tour and a publicity team and forked out for that. And I know that Scott didn’t have the greatest experience hiring outside publicity, but I wondered how yours went for you.
[00:37:20.990] – Alex Darwin
Yeah. No, that’s a great question. And I’m glad to talk about. So this is specifically on the UK side. When Orbit US also buys UK, you get an editor on both US and UK side. But the UK team is even smaller than the US team. One thing I really wanted to do was be able to push the book out in the UK. I outsourced to a company called Black Crow. There’s a lot of companies out there, I’m not sure who you worked with, Scott, that will do PR for books in general. But I really feel like given how cloistered the SFF community is and how the readers are just of SFF for the most part, obviously, there’s branches now with romantacy. But I think that is a really important part of it is having someone that’s the owner of it, Jamie, who came from the working PR for one of the major firms like Tor. I’m not sure which one it was, Tor or Galanz. How do you say? Am I saying it wrong? Galance? I think that is really important because end of the day, what is PR? Pr is about contacts. If you get a generic PR firm, they’re going to send it out to generic outlets that they have contacts with.
[00:38:36.040] – Alex Darwin
If you get a firm that is very specific to the world that we right now write in, then they will have the contacts. And so Black Crow in specific is actually outsourced by some of the big five- Bunch of them.for existing authors. Now, let’s talk about whether that was successful or not. And I think it’s more akin to whether a book tour, what book tours really do, because most of what I was outsourcing for was doing a book tour in the UK, which I see is very successful, but not as far as selling books. I don’t think book tours, if you’re a midlist author, I don’t think they sell books. There’s no way around it. I think if you’re a big name and you have people lining up to see you, then certainly. But even that, it’s like they’re getting books signed. If they already knew about you, would they have bought your book anyways? Yeah. But so as far as selling books, I don’t think my book tour or really any book tour for a similar debut author would be successful. But I do see it as a success for a few reasons. Primarily, it’s like I saw it as I knew what I was getting into.
[00:39:46.640] – Alex Darwin
And so I wanted to both meet… I’d never met my agent before, Ed, who’s out of the UK, who’s fantastic. I’d never met any of the UK publishing team. And so the previous March, I’d gone to meet the publishing team in New York, and I saw that as a really valuable experience, just getting face-to-face time, getting to see the place. I personally like meeting people face-to-face. I feel like everything now is so removed. Being able to go to the UK, go to London, not only meet a bunch of authors, I met a bunch of authors that I had met through Spiffbo. I knew going into it, my expectations were that I’m going to use this as a personal, for my own reasons, celebration to an extent. I got to… Black Road did a great job setting up. I got to do an event with Adrian Chajkowski at Waterstones. I did another event through Comicon, which is, again, it’s not selling any books. You’re going to Comicon, which is even The authors in comic Con are seen as peasants. They get put in. There’s the celebrity room, and then there’s the author room. Apparently, someone told me the story, the authors tried to get into the celebrity room at one point many years ago, and so they had separate them into another place.
[00:41:03.440] – Scott
Who let them in here?
[00:41:06.340] – Alex Darwin
For me, that was more of a fun experience. If you were going into a book tour or setting up a book tour and thinking it’s going to really sell books, I think that’s not the reason to be doing it. From a networking perspective, I hate using the word networking, but I’d rather just say person meeting, friend meeting. Networking just sounds very robotic. Just from my own personal perspective of getting to meet my agent, getting to meet the UK team who is lovely, getting to meet all these authors who I’d only talked with in the past out of the UK, that was worth it for me.
[00:41:40.190] – Sunyi
Alex Cochrane, is that right?
[00:41:43.140] – Alex Darwin
I think you said Ed. Ed Wilson. Oh, Ed Wilson. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was great. He brought me on a tour of London. He showed me all the old pubs and stuff. There’s this actor who I know who’s in the show, Warrior, who I’d never… Who had corresponded online, he also brought me around London. So it was awesome.
[00:42:06.580] – Sunyi
That’s awesome. Did you find that there’s… This sounds wrong, that it was helpful to meet booksellers? Because I think I’ve been talking a lot to Waterston lately organizing events with them and stuff like the ICA and it’s going to get more. And I feel like in addition to just I really enjoy it, I do think that there’s some value in booksellers knowing your face, I guess. Yeah. Since they’re the ones who sell your books.
[00:42:29.380] – Alex Darwin
For me, meeting booksellers, all the booksellers I’ve met have been awesome, face to face. And in the UK, especially, just being able to talk to them. I don’t know if it was helpful, but it was a positive experience for me. It was really helpful, I think, in the long term, getting to meet. I did this. It was called the fantasy in the Court that they have outside at Goldsboro. Were you there? No, we didn’t meet Sonja, did we? No.
[00:42:56.840] – Sunyi
No, but Goldsboro is run It’s owned by my agency. It’s owned by my agency.
[00:43:02.860] – Alex Darwin
So you’re going to be there this year, probably?
[00:43:04.780] – Sunyi
No, I’m not on the list. I could go down and just show up unofficially, but it’s a long way to go. I have, however, ripped off their format for fantasy in the Court to create a similar event up north.
[00:43:17.350] – Alex Darwin
It was fun. It was fun. Everyone’s drinking outside, outside a bookstore. What more could you want? A bunch of authors. But I also got to meet all the different publishers, which is pretty cool. And so whether Whether or not they remember me, some random American guy, they probably thought I was just a straggler off the street. But down the line, you never know when my agent is selling books, being able to put a face or a voice or a name to someone, I think there’s so many people trying to go after the same thing. I think it could be helpful.
[00:43:50.060] – Sunyi
It’s fun. When they drink too much, they tell you way more than they should about their industry.
[00:43:54.600] – Alex Darwin
I love it.
[00:43:55.830] – Scott
I will say with regard to Black Crow, I’ve I’ve seen them doing excellent work, and it seems like they do real things. Whether they provide real results or not, it’s not necessarily guaranteed ever, but they are one that I would voluntarily work with. And I think the big issue, and what I ran into with PR, is trying to substitute your efforts for what your publisher is doing versus add to and work with. And there’s just no amount of PR you can pay for if your publisher isn’t playing ball, too.
[00:44:31.180] – Sunyi
We’ve talked about it before, but it’s not only that if they’re not doing it, you’re having to make up their shortfall, but in a way that they almost act as a dampener.
[00:44:38.600] – Scott
If you don’t have books to send somebody, what the fuck are you going to do with the list?
[00:44:44.900] – Alex Darwin
You have to have that initial… Right. No, I fully understand it. If we didn’t have physical arcs, I think it’s far different sending… No matter what people tell you, I think sending out… Ebooks might go so far, but most of the big book… Again, to go back to what I thought really worked, being able to see various Booktubers or Booktalkers hold up a physical arc of the combat codes and show up.
[00:45:14.150] – Scott
It matters, yeah.
[00:45:15.140] – Alex Darwin
They don’t know what to do otherwise. Some people might Instagram a picture of the Kindle, but that’s what it’s all about. They get a lot of these books on a regular basis and being able to showcase them. It’s a big deal. Back to that, I think what people sometimes don’t realize about Booktube, YouTube, as well as Book Talk, to some extent, TikTok, is there’s an algorithm that goes into YouTube, at least, where if you get ranked Let’s say a blogger or a YouTuber puts out a video about your book that’s like, My top 10 action sci-fi books, and your book is listed as one. Down the line, it’s not just that initial hit of viewers that they’re getting. Because when they put their video out, based on their viewership, there’s going to be an initial however many thousand people that watch it off that initial viewership. But down the line, those videos are getting indexed by YouTube, much like Google indexes websites. When people are searching YouTube or looking for book recs on YouTube, these videos are getting popped up. You can get long-tail sales on your book, which is, again, why publishers have these relationships with these book YouTubers and why there’s this entire ecosystem that has obviously become so important to the point where like, Barnes & Nobles has a shelf of book talk recommendations.
[00:46:42.010] – Alex Darwin
We’ve gotten to a point, maybe oversaturation, but right now in the past five, six years, it’s been, I think, extremely important.
[00:46:51.660] – Sunyi
I think that the people who go to Instagram and Book Talk and YouTube and look for books, they are interested in how the book looks and its physical is a factor for them. Plus also a lot of the arcs that I get, they don’t even have a cover. So you can load up on your Kindle if you want to take a picture of it, but it’s just like a blank title page. So it has the same impact. Did you like your trad cover?
[00:47:14.850] – Alex Darwin
I have a special place in my heart for my self-pub cover, Felix Ortiz, who’s now doing… I don’t know, he’s doing all sorts of stuff. I see him all over the place, and I love that cover, and I definitely have a special place in my heart. That being said, that cover was very specific for the audience. I think maybe people don’t all realize that the self-pub audience is very… Obviously, there’s crossover between self-pub, and it’s getting a little bit more murky between self-pub and trad. But still to this day, there are entire genres that are obviously self-pub that do extremely well and are primarily based on Kindle Unlimited. The people that read Kindle Unlimited, by and large, are a separate population from the people that buy paperbacks or buy full-price books, which makes sense because you’re paying essentially a subscribership like you would for Netflix, and therefore you’re getting as many books as you want. I don’t think… Where was I there? Sorry. Sorry, totally got. I think what decision Orbit made to put a, essentially, I guess this is not a video, put a dragon on the cover was very calculated and I think was the right decision as far as if my self-pub cover, which was almost anime character artwork to some extent.
[00:48:38.990] – Alex Darwin
That’s why I liked it. Yeah, no, exactly. That’s why I liked it. I was very targeted towards that self-pub, KU audience, which, again, is a different audience.
[00:48:48.300] – Sunyi
Do you know much about lit RPG? Have you ever looked into that scene at all?
[00:48:52.110] – Alex Darwin
I personally have never written in that, but I have done a bunch of research, given how big it is in the offshoot, which is called Progression Fantasy. There are some real big hitters in that. I’m sure you guys have heard of Will White. That’s not lit RPG. That’s more considered progression fantasy, which is, again, they’re like cousins. But those books hit the New York Times. I think one of them hit the number one New York Times bestseller list. Again, that’s an entire different audience, really. Again, there must be a crossover, but that’s a very specific audience. I know for a fact that a bunch of the Big Five have talked or thought about going after lit RPG. And the response they’ve gotten is they essentially have a barrier to entry, even though there’s eyeballs and there’s dollar signs in that audience because it’s such a large audience. But the problem is a lot of the big authors are making more not only through Kindle readership, but through advances that audio publishers will pay them. And so what I’ve heard is the amount that these audio publishers, like Podium or Tantor Pay, is prohibitively expensive for Trad, especially because it’s a new…
[00:50:14.690] – Alex Darwin
It It would be a new foray, and it would be a risk from their perspective.
[00:50:19.030] – Sunyi
I was surprised when Orbit took an interest in it because, well, I think Orbit produces… It’s one of the few publishers that basically still has a functioning midlist for our genre. But that means that what they pay in advance is relatively limited. But even a bigger publisher like Tor, unless they’re handing out seven figures, I don’t see any reason why those authors would sign with them because they’re just making so much fucking money doing what they’re doing. And it comes around with publishers going, Oh, but there’s a market for? And it’s like, Yeah, but you don’t have the bank for that market.
[00:50:49.730] – Alex Darwin
Right. And it’s a risk. It’s a risk for them, especially if they’re doing well what they’re doing. But I actually think that’s what the main play is for Orbit works. I know there’s a lot of opinions on that new digital imprint from Orbit, but I actually think that’s probably one of their primary goals is to use that to capture that audience, which they otherwise would not have access to. I’m sure Orbitworks is going to be, I don’t know about primarily, but some large portion of it will be KU, I’m guessing. Again, they’re going to have access to… I’m sure they They’re probably trying to aim to bring a lot of those readers over to their more traditional business through that middle ground imprint.
[00:51:39.270] – Sunyi
No, that makes sense. It’s nice to hear a theory on that. Other questions, Scott, go for it.
[00:51:43.460] – Scott
Yes, I do for you, Sonja. Have you been eating a huge hunk of chocolate this whole time?
[00:51:49.190] – Alex Darwin
Yeah, I’ve seen that, too.
[00:51:54.060] – Sunyi
It’s left over on Christmas. It’s those chocolate on a spoon, and you put them in hot milk and they dissolve.
[00:51:59.490] – Scott
. Sure. Well, yeah.
[00:52:01.030] – Alex Darwin
I want some chocolate now. I’ve been eating my kids Easter chocolate, and they keep very close tabs on it. And so I’ll eat it at night. But then they must be getting older because now they’ll know. They didn’t used to know. They’re becoming sentient.
[00:52:18.070] – Sunyi
This is the part where I get to ask our guests what the pettiest hill you would die on is. And if you need examples in the past, we’ve had ones like JT saying that basically thinks Calvin should be the best temperature measurement or Mark’s Day going off about American imperialism and things like that. It can be anything you want.
[00:52:39.450] – Alex Darwin
What’s the most controversial thing I can think of to make this podcast get a lot of traction? Let’s see. I could do a jiu-jitsu one, but that would be who’s going to know what we’re talking about? I don’t know. Here’s something my wife and I always argue about is I will always say cold showers are better than hot showers, hands down. Only cold showers. Scott’s face. Only cold showers. Yeah, look at… There’s logic behind it, though. There’s logic behind it. It’s not for some woo-woo health reason. Like, Oh, I feel like I’m prolonging my life band. It’s just simply because after a hot shower, you feel tired, and I shower in the morning, mainly after working out, after training. And so after a cold shower, I feel happy. A hot shower. It feels nice when it’s happening, but then you’re working out on the experience after.
[00:53:34.760] – Scott
That’s the real science behind cold plunges and everything, right? So I’m not arguing that. They just suck. For a while, I would do a normal hot shower like a normal person who loves himself would do.
[00:53:49.190] – Alex Darwin
And then- I am a glutton for pain.
[00:53:52.690] – Scott
At the end, I would turn it cold and I’d take 60 to 90 seconds of I have a cold shower right at the end. Yeah, and that sucks.
[00:54:03.030] – Alex Darwin
That’s a good start. That’s a good start. But now, if I take a hot shower, I just feel like I’m missing out on- I mean, look, man- In summer, I will swim in very cold water.
[00:54:12.960] – Sunyi
But in winter, I’m just cold. All the I don’t have the fucking time. I just want to be warm for five minutes of the day.
[00:54:18.600] – Scott
Yeah. I lived in Brazil for two years. And in Brazil, they don’t have water heaters. They have things that are called chuveiros. And And chouveros are shower heads that are connected to electricity by the shittiest little wire nuts you’ve ever seen in your life. Every once in a while, and by every once in a while, I mean once every few weeks, they explode while you’re in the shower often. And so, yes, that is a significant electrocution hazard. But for people with no money stuck in Luckily, we weren’t literally in the favelas, but right next to the favelas, it meant cold showers for most of two years. I am no stranger to cold showers. And in São Paulo, the water does get quite cold, especially in their winter. So it’s not like there’s no relationship there with cold showers. It’s just that the relationship is very, very negative.
[00:55:27.890] – Alex Darwin
Having a choice Having a choice matters, right? If you’re consciously turning the water cold, it’s different than if you have no choice for a cold shower. I understand. I got you.
[00:55:41.370] – Scott
Anyway, I’ve taken a cold shower before, and When my water heater has gone out in the past, in America, I’ve had to take cold showers, but I would not and I will not ever take a full cold shower ever again.
[00:55:58.410] – Alex Darwin
I don’t know if this is I’ll say a jiu-jitsu one. This is more of a gripe than a hill I’ll die on, but the gripe is just people not understanding strangles. I think you guys haven’t done it. It’s just important, but not understanding. Most people think that you’re getting strangled, and then when you let go of someone after 10 seconds, like in a James Bond movie, that the person’s dead, right? They won’t ever. But in fact, that person is oftentimes is waking up within the next three seconds and having some hallucinatory experience.
[00:56:34.600] – Scott
Unless you hold it too long and you’re actually good at it.
[00:56:37.940] – Alex Darwin
That’s where the danger lies in not knowing.
[00:56:42.310] – Scott
How long would you have to hold, say, a rear naked or whatever that’s targeting all of the supply to the brain? How long would you have to hold that for it to be dangerous?
[00:56:52.810] – Alex Darwin
Dangerous? Dangerous? A little bit too long. A dangerous is right past the point where the person is unconscious. To be honest, if you have respiratory or heart issues, it’s dangerous being- It’s always- Of course, you’re putting yourself at risk. But as far as if you were running some sick experiment on how long the average person would survive, I would say a minute and a half would probably be too little blood to the brain for it to be able to turn back on. I don’t know about the studies, but I’m sure there’s a bunch of dangers at any point, if you have issues. But most people that have done jiu-jitsu have been choked and conscious at least a few times.
[00:57:37.570] – Scott
Oh, I’m sure a lot of times. Yeah.
[00:57:40.690] – Alex Darwin
Right. I mean, generally, you learn when you’re going to go out and are as preemptive as possible. Again, you don’t want that to be happening to you a lot. And apparently, if it happens, you’re more likely to go out faster. It’s almost like once you get knocked out, you have a chin that is more fragile, essentially. I don’t the science behind that or if it’s just pseudoscience, but just through hearsay, that’s what you hear.
[00:58:06.440] – Scott
That’s interesting. Now, I think that’s all the questions I have for on the podcast, but I have one more that doesn’t necessarily need to go on.
[00:58:14.950] – Sunyi
Okay. Do you want to plug yourself really quickly then, and Scott can ask a secret question off there?
[00:58:20.630] – Alex Darwin
Yeah. Oh, great, Scott. Now they’re going to be asking, what was the question off there?
[00:58:26.470] – Scott
That’s their problem.
[00:58:30.520] – Alex Darwin
Combat codes is out now, and Griever’s Blood, the sequel, is out now. If you are into science-fantasy with action, found family, a lone wolf and cub central relationship, like Aria and the Hound, or what are some others? Mando and Grogu, that central relationship. You don’t need to be into martial arts. You don’t need to understand martial arts. I’ve been in the world of the combat codes for so long that, to be honest, I’m super excited for my next book, which should be on sub soon, which is, again, like a Jurassic Park techno thriller, a la Blake Kraut.
[00:59:10.050] – Scott
Yeah, put me on your list for that one.
[00:59:11.520] – Alex Darwin
All right, we’ll do.
[00:59:12.980] – Scott
And I will say, so I haven’t read combat codes yet. I’ve got it on one of my TBR files, but a close friend has read it and loved it. Said it was legitimately good. I like the bunny ears there. No, that was me doing literal quotations.
[00:59:32.920] – Alex Darwin
Okay.
[00:59:33.530] – Sunyi
I read it. There you go. You read it?
[00:59:36.220] – Scott
Okay. Well, I love it.
[00:59:36.760] – Alex Darwin
Thank you. I appreciate. No.
[00:59:38.080] – Sunyi
You’ve been listening to the Publishing Radio podcast with Sunyi Dean and Scott Drakeford. Tune in next time for more in-depth discussion on everything publishing industry. See you later.
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