…with Holly Race
Today, we talk about the instability of trad; relaunching a career that stumbled; moving from YA to adult; writing with the market in mind; the pitfalls of manuscript assessment services; and much more.
Show Notes
(coming soon)
Links
Transcripts (by Sunyi Dean)
[00:00:01.460] – Sunyi
Hi, I’m Sunyi Dean.
[00:00:03.020] – Scott
And I’m Scott Drakeford.
[00:00:05.130] – 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 of our careers went in very different directions.
[00:00:21.480] – Scott
That pattern repeats itself throughout the industry over and over. Why do some books succeed while others seem to be dead on arrival? In this.
[00:00:30.350] – Sunyi
Podcast, we aim to answer these questions and many more along with how to build and maintain an author career.
[00:00:38.000] – 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. Welcome to the Publishing Rodio Podcast where we are extremely tired but still trying really hard. Today, we have Holly Race. We’re very excited to get into her publishing journey and whatever secret she can give us. Holly, do you want to give us the download on who you are and what your journey has been like till now?
[00:01:25.320] – Holly
Sure. Thanks very much for having me. I started out in theatre and then moved into TV and film as a script editor working in development. I originally started as what’s known as a script reader, which is one of the first gatekeepers in the TV and film industries. Then I got a job working for Ardman animations, who have done movies like Sean the Sheep and Chicken Run and Pirates in an adventure with scientists. So all that fun stuff. After working with Ardman, I moved to London and I started working for a variety of companies like working title films. I did some research for them on an earlier version of the film that would become Mary, Queen of Scots, not on the script that eventually actually got made. That’s another story. And then working for Red Planet Pictures on the fourth series of a show called Death in Paradise, which is like a cozy crime drama on BBC One that’s very, very popular. I think it’s in its 11th, 12th, 13th season now, something like that, something very impressive. After Red Planet, I was going to be working as script editor on season two of BBC’s Dickenzieon, which was on, I don’t know, six, seven years ago.
[00:02:57.840] – Holly
It was like a mash-up of all of Dicken’s characters, and it was a huge production for the BBC. And everyone thought it would run for a second season, so we started working on the second season and then they cancelled it due to low ratings. So it was heartbreaking for everyone involved. At that point, I decided it was time to move on, so I ended up working for the Imaginarium Studios, which is the production company that’s run by Andy Circus of Golem fame.
[00:03:24.210] – Scott
He has a magnificent voice. I listened to just a bit of him narrating The Lord of the Rings, and good Lord.
[00:03:31.290] – Sunyi
We’ve got that. We’ve got that audiobook in the car.
[00:03:35.410] – Holly
He’s a true gentleman. I ended up getting made redundant from the Imaginarium. They made a lot of redundancies. And around that time, I had had this idea for a young adult fantasy novel, and I’ve been thinking and talking about it for years. And my husband finally was like, Will you just write the thing instead of telling me about it? But I’m the person who needs certificate before I feel like I’m allowed to do anything. So I went and did the FABRE Academy’s writing a novel course. And when I was made redundant, I was like, Oh, well, this seems like a good time for me to spend my redundancy money and give myself some time to finish writing the novel, and then I’ll get a proper job again. And while I was finishing writing the novel, I found out I was pregnant, and no one was going to give me a proper job for a while. So I guess I became a full-time author before I even had my book deal, which was a really stupid idea, I guess. So I finished my novel, I got an agent. It was a very smooth and easy process for me.
[00:04:43.080] – Holly
I got three offers within 48 hours, so I thought, I’m done, I’m sorted, definitely can be a full-time writer. We went out and sub a couple of months later, and it was very slow, very quiet, and everyone was like, Oh, we love it, but we don’t know how to market it. And then a couple of months after that, we got one offer from Hotkey Books who were an imprint of Bonny A, for a three-book deal because it’s a trilogy. And we accepted. I think it was quite a good amount for YA, but let’s just say it was not minimum wage and it was going to have to last me like five years. I pretty much doubled it from my foreign rights sales. But yeah, I think overall, from that deal, I got about £40,000, which I don’t know what that is in dollars, $50,000, $60,000. So that was me for three years. During that process, I went through two agents, just through agents leaving the agency that I was at. And when I finished the trilogy, I was like, Oh, I think maybe it’s time for me to move on. So I approached an agent who I knew had read Midnight’s Twins, my first book, book ages ago and was like, Oh, I really liked your feedback from that.
[00:06:04.490] – Holly
Do you think you might be willing to take me on based on just some ideas I have for future novels? And they said, Oh, yeah. We had a discussion and everything seemed really great. So I signed with them and I left my previous agency. And then three weeks later, they called me up when I was on holiday and said, Actually, I don’t think I’m the right agent to represent you after all. Really, really sorry. Bye-bye. I had written up three chapters and a pitch for two different novels, One Way, One Adult at that point, and sent it to them. I think they had just realised that it wasn’t what they wanted to represent, because I did say to them, Is the writing bad? Am I just a bad writer? Should I just give up? And they’re like, No, the writing is good. It’s just not something I want to sell. I’m really sorry. It was a whole thing. I was on family reunion. I took the call in the bathroom of my hotel room while my daughter was sleeping because it was like 6:00 AM. It was pretty devastating. And my third book, the end of the trilogy, was coming out the following week.
[00:07:13.150] – Holly
So I went into that because it was my first ever launch, because the first two books had launched during lockdowns. And I was just like, This might be the last launch I ever write, the last book I ever published. I don’t know. I’m out of contract now. Who knows what the future holds. And then I spent the next few months writing an adult book, which was like an adult version of the Y-A that I had pitched to this agent. I was just like, I do think there’s something here. I’m going to go for it. So I wrote it, Rage Writing, and a few months later, got nine agent offers for that book within a couple of weeks, which was lovely. But obviously, I was like, Well, I don’t trust this anymore. This could mean absolutely nothing. Who knows? I was a lot more particular about the questions I asked and who I approached at that point. I did a lot of asking around about those agents. And yeah, a couple of months later, we went out with that Adult fantasy trilogy, and we got a six-figure, three-book deal for it with Orbit. And now I can actually say five, six years later that I am actually a full-time writer, and I can actually afford for the next few years to pay my bills with just my writing.
[00:08:40.480] – Holly
That’s my journey to date. Sorry, that was really long.
[00:08:44.820] – Scott
That.
[00:08:45.150] – Sunyi
Was perfect. I’ll come back to ask about the first book deal in a second, but I just wanted to quickly ask, was there a reason why you changed from Y-A to adult? Was it like a marketing reason or just it felt like the book was moving in that direction?
[00:08:57.940] – Holly
It felt like the themes I wanted to write about were more adult. It’s a feminist fantasy retelling of The Six Wives of Henry VIII. It’s told from the points of view of all six wives, all six queens. I wanted to explore my experience of motherhood, which I obviously had since writing the Y-A book and various other stuff that had come up. And yeah, it just felt more adult. But I won’t lie, when I went out to agents, I said, This could be Y-A. It could be crossover. It could be adults. I’m open to rewriting it and editing it in a way in whatever way you think is going to give me a good deal and longevity as an author. And I had agents come back to me say, Oh, we’d like it to not only be YA, firmly YA, but also a standalone, not a trilogy. And others saying, No, it’s definitely adult. And others saying, Oh, well, we could take it out to both Y-A and adult publishers and see what happens. In the end, after talking to a lot of different people and going with the agent I went with, we decided to pitch it securely at adults, and I think that was the right decision for the book I wanted to write.
[00:10:19.840] – Sunyi
In the end, actually. So when you’re writing, what do you think for you makes the difference between a Y-A book and an adult book? Because this is always a really hot topic of discussion. I remember I’ll just say very quickly that for me this came up because long ago when I was writing my first book, which I envisioned as an adult epic fantasy, and I was one of those people who paid for a manuscript assessment, which some writers do when they’re desperate. To be clear, this is not something I could afford. I sold jewelry to pay for that fee. I basically got this letter back from the manuscript assessment service that said, Well, our recommendation for this manuscript is that you remove four of the five point of views, change it from adult to YA, and strip out all the political and social commentary which is uns suited to a novel of this kind. It was like the worst writing advice I’ve ever received. It made me want to write adult more and to put in this social… I mean, that’s a whole thing, assuming that why I can’t have social commentary. But it’s funny now because I’m now five or six years down the line.
[00:11:26.350] – Sunyi
I have actually been looking at that book again thinking, I want to rewrite it as Y. A, because I’ve taken a lot of the adult elements out and used them in other books. But it’s an interesting discussion with like, and I remember your editor, Brit, specifically, I had a thread from her bookmarked on Twitter where she went into the differences between Y. A. And… I don’t think they’re totally adult. But anyway, if you have thoughts on that, I’m very interested.
[00:11:47.840] – Holly
I’ve had this conversation a lot with other Y. A. Authors who are making the move or are thinking about making the move into adults. I definitely had a lot of worries that I couldn’t write adult, even though Iand I can’t quite pinpointed the difference between the two. I don’t think it’s anything personally to do with social and political commentary. I mean, my Y. A. Fantasy is basically a thinly disguised metaphor for the rise of populism in the world over the last 10 years. So it’s really, really thinly disguised. I would say some of it is down to the characters and the decisions that they make and the moral decisions they make. I think that YA editors and obviously children’s and middle-grade editors are maybe more aware of the messaging and the role models that you’re wanting to portray for a particular target audience. Whereas an adult you can be more of a undisguised anti-hero, anti-heroin, maybe. Yeah.
[00:12:56.230] – Sunyi
Sorry, my eldest child is requesting food and—( I will go down and give you something in just a bit!)
[00:13:03.820] – Holly
I’m fine to take a break whenever is okay.
[00:13:06.900] – Sunyi
No, that’s all right. It’s fine. It’s just I was really interested. I think one of the things that my agent had said talking about it to me was that YA focuses more on first and that there is like a YA voice and that there is the intensity, the emotions, stuff like that. But that’s very hard to pin down, I guess. Yeah, I agree on the social front, like YA is very in your face, actually, with tackling social, political issues, definitely at the forefront of that, maybe more so than adult.
[00:13:37.910] – Holly
Yeah. I know people talk about the YA voice a lot, and I can absolutely see that there are some commonalities. In YA, I think there maybe is more of a tendency to write first person present or first person than in adults. But I think as with all genres, as a way, you can have literary YA, you can have commercial YA. I think there is room for a range of voices in there.
[00:14:06.280] – Scott
So being that your first contract was YA and then your second was adult, when you went through everything you went through with the agent changes and everything, and then finally went on sub the second time, were you submitting that second work as yourself, the same author name, including information from your trilogy, et cetera? Or was it Fresh Slate? Your agent didn’t mention that you had another series. I’m just interested in what information was included because the general common wisdom, I guess, accepted wisdom in the industry is that your first deal cements who you are as an author and the tier that you can expect in the future, et cetera. And that wasn’t the case for you. I’m very interested to hear what you did to escape that.
[00:15:01.540] – Holly
It was definitely something that I asked my agent about was, should I sub under a new name and just quietly forget the way a trilogy? And she felt that it would be okay to be honest about the fact that I had three books under my belt already, because I was essentially debuting as an adult debut. And that’s how they’re marketing me as my adult debut. So I still get that of the debut pie again. But yeah, it was definitely a worry, because my Y-A trilogy is not sold well at all. Yeah. Do you want to.
[00:15:39.660] – Sunyi
Go into that, if that’s okay? Because I know you said it launched during COVID, like so many ill fated books, I’m afraid.
[00:15:48.140] – Holly
Yeah. So I got the deal in 2018, and it launched in June of 2020, so a couple of months after lockdown, first lockdown, there was no bookshops open. It didn’t, obviously. Not much YA gets into the supermarkets, and it suddenly didn’t get a supermarket slot. And I think that Hotkey did a wonderful job on the cover. They designed the cover to be like, Oh, I’m just walking past this in a bookshop, and it looks so pretty. I’ll pick it up and have a look. And obviously that couldn’t happen. So without that walking past moment, it didn’t really get a chance, I don’t think, to be honest. And it’s not now with the benefit of hindsight, it’s not particularly commercial pitch. I think having an elevator pitch and a one-sentence logline is increasingly important. And I’ve never been able to get that down for my YA at all. And I wish that I had realised how similar that aspect of novel writing and, well, novel selling is to TV and film selling, actually.
[00:17:01.960] – Sunyi
Yeah. Did you have a sense in the run-up to launch that it was not going to necessarily pan out how you hoped?
[00:17:11.180] – Holly
I had a small sense, but I didn’t really know what to expect. I had no context. I didn’t really, at the time, I was so, as we all were, I think, during lockdown, so alone and isolated. And I hadn’t cultivated any… I’m in my mid to late 30s. I’m not really on social media and down with the YA authors who are very present on social media. And so I didn’t really cultivate that network of authors at that point, which I now know is so useful to comparing notes, because, especially before we had publishing radio, to understanding what’s normal and what’s possible. I had a idea that it wasn’t going to be the smash hit that I had hoped and that we all hope for for our books. But it wasn’t until a month or so before when it became clear that a lot of the marketing that I think they’d planned for me couldn’t happen because of lockdown and there wasn’t really an option to replace it with something else. I was like, Oh, this is not good, is it? And then, as you’ve covered in previous episodes, I was tied into writing a further two books, knowing that no one was reading them.
[00:18:34.550] – Holly
And then I decided to write another trilogy afterwards because it had gone so well the first time. Well, they’re.
[00:18:40.210] – Sunyi
Probably reading them now if your second one’s taken off a bit. Because it looks like it’s been doing pretty well anyway.
[00:18:48.760] – Holly
Well, time will tell. It’s not out until 2025. So I’ve got two years to wait and wonder. Yeah.
[00:18:55.260] – Sunyi
Oh, is it?
[00:18:56.120] – Holly
I.
[00:18:56.380] – Sunyi
Saw the announcement for it. Oh, my God. Okay. I think it will I think it’ll be.
[00:19:02.800] – Scott
Absolutely fine. Yeah. And I’m not glad to hear all of this, right? But I am a little relieved that I’m not the only one who had to learn all of these lessons the hard way, right? Yeah. Yeah. Everything, minus the agent changes, like everything you’re talking about is some form of what I went through, right? Except you went through it much faster. You learned much faster, and you obviously came out the other side in a good position much more quickly than I did. I am interested to hear you say that having an elevator pitch and being able to distill your book down to something like a one-line elevator pitch is very important for getting going from book to enticing somebody to pick up that book, right? Because I think that’s absolutely something that I didn’t focus on with my first book, first trilogy, and it has absolutely hurt me. And it’s not like I haven’t tried. It’s hard. It’s really hard. Yeah, it is. So having something that fits in that one sentence thing makes a big difference. Now, this is leading into a question about your film and TV background. Being that you’ve been exposed to so many different scripts over your time in that industry, I’m assuming, because it sounds like you were the slush pile person and then going through and editing and making things actually work.
[00:20:39.650] – Scott
Has that affected how you write and how you approach novels other than obviously understanding that there’s an importance to having that one-liner?
[00:20:50.580] – Holly
I think my writing is fairly filmic, I think, in terms of imagery rather than dialogue. I really struggled with dialogue when I’m writing prose, which I think a lot of people who maybe don’t write scripts a lot are quite surprised by because I have a lot of writer friends who are like, Oh, I’m thinking about becoming a scriptwriter, and I’ll just adapt my book. I’ll just take all the dialogue out and put it in script. And I’m just like, Going to die. This is not what scriptwriting is. It’s all about imagery and what you’re seeing, it’s screen. So you’re telling a story on screen, not through dialogue. That’s audio. So, yeah, I think I’m probably quite image-focused in my writing, and I have a very strong sensor as I’m writing, which is not always helpful because the editor in me is being like, This is shit. This is shit. This is not working. I know why this is not working, but I do not have the energy right now to make it work and trying to put that script editor in a box and be like, wait until the second draft when you’re going to be useful is quite tricky sometimes.
[00:22:07.060] – Scott
Yeah. I feel that. I wasn’t a script editor, but- I think we will have.
[00:22:11.230] – Holly
That sometimes, right? Yes. Yeah, we will.
[00:22:14.630] – Scott
Have that. Yeah, indeed.
[00:22:16.640] – Sunyi
Do you think the one sentence pitch is particularly important in why versus adults? Or are they both useful, I guess? I mean, they’re all, but they’re useful to an extent in both, but… I don’t know. I think.
[00:22:33.400] – Holly
I feel like I’m not necessarily saying this from a place of huge expertise now, but I feel like why to get the bigger deals, I think you do need to be super hooky and have the elevator pitch in a way that maybe adult you have a little bit more leeway. But I don’t know. I’m not basing that on anything more than gut feeling, really, and looking at my friends and what YA recently has got the bigger deals.
[00:22:59.860] – Sunyi
No, that’s fine. And just this is like a bit of a tangent, really, not more of a comment than a question. But I’ve been listening to another podcast called Cover Meetings, and it’s about cover designers in the book industry. And they’re talking about book design and cover design. And one that I found interesting that they’re talking about recently is how one of the things designers find very frustrating is that covers look the same in all formats. I was thinking about that when you’re talking how you felt like your book was designed to look good on a shelf and then it had to survive as an ebook. And one of the things that gets covers vetoed or approved is whether they look good as a thumbnail. But that means that everything looks the same in the bigger version and just all stuff like that. It was making me think about how… Because what their preference would be is that we have a different cover for every format because that to designers is what would look good. Of course, getting publishers to agree to that is probably not going to happen.
[00:23:56.040] – Holly
Yeah. I never thought about that before. And I guess if youone of the lucky few who gets it blown up big on a poster on the tube or something, then that must be a whole other thing to navigate.
[00:24:08.090] – Sunyi
Yes. I did wonder because, Yellowface has been on lots of posters, and I did wonder, did they design this for e-book or poster or tote? I mean, it looks good in a tote bag. Can I ask a bit about your orbit deal as well? Because I think that when you mentioned it was in a pre-empt. And I know you’d said on your site that orbit fought off a lot of competition, but you were in a position for it.
[00:24:32.530] – Holly
Yeah, we had quite… I mean, it all happened quite quickly. I was expecting to sit for a couple of months like I did for the YA, but I think it was about a week and a half after we went on sub, we had quite a lot of publishers taking it to acquisitions. And then Orbit came in with a pre-empt for world rights, and we said no to that. And we then had a pre-empt from another publisher, and Orbit came back with another pre-empt, which we said no to, and then they upped their offer for pre-empt for world English, which we were like, You know what? This feels decent. And they had a really good vision for what they wanted to do with it. And I think my agent felt that there was a lot of interest brewing from other parties. We knew it was with acquisitions with quite a lot of other publishers. But we were just like, you know what? We really wanted the US deal, and Orbit was guaranteeing that tied up US, UK. So we just thought, well, let’s go with that knowing that we’ve got both US and UK in the bag for a really good amount of money.
[00:25:57.880] – Holly
Let’s just bite the bullet. And Orbit have such a good reputation as well. And they’ve been so enthusiastic about it.
[00:26:06.680] – Scott
Yeah, that enthusiasm makes a big difference for sure. Sorry.
[00:26:11.540] – Sunyi
Go ahead, Sonia. Did you go to the US first? I was just asking if you went out to the US first, your UK base like me, or if you tried. I don’t know what the strategy is on that side.
[00:26:20.760] – Holly
I’m trying to remember. I think we went out simultaneously or there wasn’t long between the two. I think it was maybe a couple of days between the two, if anything. Yeah, I know that because the agency I’m with, my agent is based in the UK, but the agency has a US office as well. And so the head, the agent who runs the agency took it out in the US and my agent took it out in the UK, and they were talking to each other all the time about strategies and everything. But yeah, I think I was very clear that the US was a target for me, because my YA never got a US deal. And I think particularly in YA, and I don’t know if it’s the same in adult, but if you don’t get a US deal, then you don’t get a lot of attention from UK booksellers either.
[00:27:16.330] – Sunyi
We didn’t get a chance to talk to him about it, but I think it was in episode two with the booksellers, where Jeremy was there, J. T. Greyhouse. So he is American-based, but he didn’t sell his American rights. So he got a UK deal of Galax. Essentially, Jabbawockee self-publish authors in the States who don’t have an American deal. So that’s a… Yeah, most of the sales in the US are from the bookstore that he’s affiliated with, I believe. Because it is a much bigger market.
[00:27:48.660] – Scott
I do have a question for you about that and about the deal. So you mentioned that a pre-empt became essentially an auction, at least between a few of the interested parties, and that there was enthusiasm on the Orbitz side besides good money that helped convince you. What information did they present you with? Because you also mentioned that you felt like they had a good plan for it, et cetera. You don’t have to tell me anything that you feel would make your publisher upset if you shared. But I am interested to hear what that back and forth was like, what materials they presented that convinced you that thing.
[00:28:31.200] – Holly
So I will say it wasn’t exactly like there was an auction of preempts going on. It was more that this second publisher came in with a preempt, and we just said, that’s not as high as what Orbit are offering. So it’s just going to be a no. Thank you very much. And then Orbit went up. What they sent was essentially a marketing document that was a list of quotes from all of their editors and their team saying what they liked about the book and what they had planned to do with it, the place they’d sit, sitting in the market. They said they wanted to do in a hardback in the UK, which was quite important to me because I never had a UK hardback before. Or these little mini author goals that you’re just like, I’d like to tick this off, please, at some point in my career, and talking about subscription boxes, all of that stuff that I suppose in some ways feels quite generic, but the way that spoke about it, it was clear that they had thought about it, and they’ve talked about it, and that they’ve done so very quickly as a big team of UK and US.
[00:29:40.800] – Holly
And it was like, okay, well, if the UK and US team all coming together to figure this out within two weeks with all of the other work that they have on, then that’s a good sign. Yeah.
[00:29:53.360] – Scott
I mean, when that enthusiasm is married with money, that’s fantastic. Yeah. I am interested to hear whether any of that made it into your contract with Orbit or whether it was just unofficial information.
[00:30:13.040] – Holly
That’s a good question. I should probably have looked more closely at my contract. I just trust my agent. I think that the hardback UK, I think, is in the contract. I don’t know if any of the marketing stuff is, but does that usually get put into contracts? I know that… Some of my friends… I know one of my friends has had her agent put a minimum marketing spend into a book contract before, and then the publisher was like, We’re not going to tell you if we’re honouring that or not. We’re not going to tell you what we’re spending our money on. So there’s no way for them to enforce that, I suppose. So I suppose there’s no real point in.
[00:30:59.830] – Sunyi
Adding it in. Yeah. There is none of that in mind. I think it was entirely just my agent being like, I trust this editor. I do think there’s an element of like, if they drop a lot of money on it and then they don’t market it, they really have fucked themselves over a little bit.
[00:31:16.080] – Scott
Or a lot bit, yeah. Proportional to the amount of money they kicked in. Yeah. Sorry, I froze there for a minute, so I didn’t hear a whole lot of that. But yeah, as far as I can tell, not many of those kinds of things make it into contracts, but besides money being the best factor, the best guarantee there is, it seems like more people should be fighting to get at least certain things, things that make sense to make contractual. It makes sense to have at least some things put in there if the publisher would sign it, right?
[00:31:54.080] – Sunyi
I think if I had the leverage, I would be requesting ARCs in contracts. I mean, I know you can ask and it probably just won’t help anyone, but I think requesting ARCs is like demonstrate if they’ve at least made them. Hopefully if they make them, they’ll think, Well, we should send them out. But just because giving books away seems to be so effective. I mean, it just consistently seems to get a lot of results. These days I’d love to interview the fourth-wing lady, but…
[00:32:26.000] – Scott
Yeah, or her editor.
[00:32:28.560] – Holly
Yeah.
[00:32:29.240] – Scott
Both. Or both. I don’t think we’ve had an editor on before, have we?
[00:32:33.800] – Sunyi
Well, we’ve asked some, and they basically said, Hell no.
[00:32:38.680] – Scott
Yeah.
[00:32:39.530] – Holly
I wonder why it is that giving away arcs is so successful. And is it just the social media side of things? Because when my ex came out for Midnight’s Twins, my first book, I think they went out really late because no one could get into the warehouse to get them because of lockdown. And so I don’t think many went out, in fact, before launch, but I don’t know how much of a difference it would have made. But I think a lot of it also depends on the packaging, doesn’t it? You see some of those beautiful arcs that get the gorgeous individual packaged in their special little boxes with extra little treats and stuff. I guess those make social media much more than things that just arrive in the post by themselves. Yeah.
[00:33:27.240] – Sunyi
Well, I think it’s such a for Indies, it’s a big strategy to have certain content that you give away to encourage people to buy into other books in your series or in your world. And there have been a few acquisitions lately from people who gathered a following on Wattpad, which is where essentially you’re giving fiction away for free. And then from that, and I think it is about building leadership and fan base and the trade office. People will take a chance on someone they don’t know if they don’t have to pay anything. And then there’s just the practical side, at least in the UK, for all the crates and stuff. You really have to have those arcs a year out to even have a shot at a crate. So if you’re, I guess, midlist and you don’t get an arc out until three months before, you’ve missed that boat three times over. Have you noticed the difference this second time with the new book deal compared to the first one and how you’ve been treated or how things are going with that?
[00:34:18.360] – Holly
Yeah. I haven’t had a huge amount of communication yet because it’s all quite fresh, because we’ve got until May 2025. So I know that there are things in the works. I’ve been kept in the loop on approaching subscription boxes and covers. And I believe that arcs are supposed to be coming out just over a year in advance of publication date, which is very different from the Y-A, which was a month before publication date. So in that respect, yes, it’s been very promising so far. I’m aware that I’m sounding a bit ungrateful about it. It’s just because I don’t trust any of it, and I don’t trust any of the success anymore. And I’m like, Yes, it seems great now. It could all go to shit tomorrow. Who knows? But at the moment, I am happy and it feels promising. And there’s been a really nice, warm, fulsome reaction from people when we announced and when it gets mentioned.
[00:35:32.500] – Scott
In a.
[00:35:32.860] – Holly
Way that there wasn’t for the first trilogy.
[00:35:35.610] – Sunyi
Sorry. You don’t sound ungrateful, actually. I was thinking about Hugh Howey and how we talked about when he started getting approached, because he was approached many, many times for film stuff. Every time people would say, Oh, we’re definitely going to make it. It’s definitely going to happen. And he would just be like, Yeah, sure, if you say so. Because he just assumed nothing ever would. And it wasn’t that he was ungrateful, he was just checked out emotionally, I guess. Would you consider doing your own scripts for an adaptation?
[00:36:03.410] – Holly
Sorry. Yeah, I would. I would love to now. I didn’t think that I would before, but I think now, yeah, I would quite like to. And it’s becoming more common now, I think, as well for authors to adapt their own books, which is positive. Okay.
[00:36:19.990] – Sunyi
I hadn’t heard of that, actually. I mean, I’m super.
[00:36:22.740] – Scott
Interested in that.
[00:36:23.810] – Sunyi
Sorry, there’s a bit… Go on. There’s a bit of lag on my side. No, go ahead. Oh, I.
[00:36:28.250] – Scott
Was just going to comment that I love that trend, and I would love if it became more common for authors to develop their own scripts, have a real pathway into doing something with those scripts that they developed off their own work. Do you have a plan for that? Once you develop a script, do you know what your next step is? Or is it still like everybody else? Just hope some film person approaches you.
[00:36:57.620] – Holly
I haven’t at the moment started writing the adaptation of the adult trilogy. We haven’t yet gone out on sub to production companies with it because of the strike, the.
[00:37:11.380] – Scott
Hollywood strike.
[00:37:12.060] – Holly
It’s meant that everything’s just gone quiet on that front. But now that that is over, I think there are plans in motion to take it out on sub. I personally wouldn’t start writing any adaptation of my book unless it got options and the production company said, Yeah, we’d be open to you writing it, and we will pay you some money for that. I do know some authors who have written adaptations of their books as their spec scripts or calling card scripts, I think David called it in his episode. And I think that can be a really good exercise to get into the way of scriptwriting and the differences between scripts and novels and treating them as two very separate and separate forms of storytelling.
[00:38:02.730] – Scott
Yeah, for sure. Is that submission to production companies happening through your same literary agent? Do they have a film person in-house? How’s that working?
[00:38:13.970] – Holly
They don’t have someone in-house. They use a few different film agents. The person who is, I think, taking mine on submission is someone they’ve used a lot before and who’s had a lot of success. She’s based in the UK, but I think she has a lot of links to the US as well. Personally, I’m feeling like I don’t know what’s going to happen with it because it’s fantasy. It would be very expensive to make. And so even with the nice star deal, someone would have to take a bit of a pun on it before publication.
[00:38:47.960] – Scott
We’ll cut that out.
[00:38:49.030] – Holly
Because it’s- It.
[00:38:50.150] – Scott
Would be very cheap and easy to make the perfect acquisition.
[00:38:59.140] – Holly
50 pounds an episode. It’s yours.
[00:39:06.330] – Scott
Well, I shouldn’t assume. Did that same process happen with your first trilogy?
[00:39:11.680] – Holly
The first trilogy, the agency I was with had an agent in-house who was based in the US. And yeah, they took it out to production companies. And I think I had one meeting and it didn’t go anywhere. But again, that was very, very expensive to make. And also didn’t have a clear defined genre, I would say, and film and TV in particular, they like their genres. It’s why crime is evergreen for TV, because it’s such a clear, well-known genre with such clear stakes all the way through. So, yeah, I’m realistic, I would say, about chances of fantasy and sci-fi getting screen deals.
[00:40:01.600] – Scott
Yeah. It’s becoming more common, though. So I wonder if it ever gets to the point where it’s easier to adapt because that is an established genre.
[00:40:10.400] – Holly
It definitely become more common. I mean, Game of Thrones just opened up the landscape in that way in a way that hadn’t before for TV, it was such a game-changer. But I think if you look at what’s actually getting optioned at the moment, the vast majority of it is still contemporary because it’s cheaper to make. And I mean, obviously, these books are still very good, but they are cheaper to make, so they are slightly safer bets.
[00:40:35.320] – Scott
Yeah, for sure.
[00:40:36.320] – Sunyi
You mentioned earlier on not having a lot of contacts, and that was part of not knowing what to expect or what was normal. I’m assuming now you probably know a few more people in the industry. I just wondered if you reach this point or if you ever had conversations with Orbit about what good sales look like or what they’re expecting from you from the new book. I guess I’m just asking because I’m just passed a year out of since my debut, and I think I’m just now at the point where I understand the sales my publisher is hoping for and starting to understand what my own royalty statements mean and that thing. But, yeah, just curious if anyone ever talks to you about it or if you just figured that out yourself now.
[00:41:18.990] – Holly
Can I ask you something back before I answer that question? Yes, definitely. Did you figure that out yourself? Or was that through conversations with your publisher where they told you what sales they were hoping for and expecting?
[00:41:34.830] – Sunyi
So I had long periods of silence with actually, certainly on the UK side, because essentially my publishers left and then a bunch of editors left and someone on maternity leave and all my post was going to a previous address and all this stuff, which I didn’t realise. And I didn’t know how I was doing until I got surprise royalty payments in March from Harper. I realized that my calculations were off because when we look at royalties and sales, I’d always assumed one sale means I get about one dollar or one pound, like very basic back of the napkin math. But actually for hardback, that’s very different. It’s about 250 or something back of the napkin math again. I assumed I was doing worse than I was and was surprised when Book Eaters earned out in the States and in the UK, earned out the trilogy by about Christmas. I didn’t realize that I didn’t need as many sales as I thought I did, if that makes sense. I was thinking, Oh, I’ve got to get like, I don’t know, 60,000 sales to pay off the UK advance. Actually, it was more like 26,000 or something.
[00:42:50.400] – Sunyi
I don’t know. Anyway, I’m rambling too much, but now I had to figure it out, and I think I now have a sense of what good is and what bad is and how that’s going. And talking to the debues helps as well. It’s difficult because you’ve got to talk to people that have a similar deal and similar genre as yourself as well as the forgotten lost tribes like Scott. Thanks. Sorry, Scott.
[00:43:14.260] – Scott
No, it’s okay. That’s what I’m here for.
[00:43:18.940] – Holly
I haven’t had that conversation with Orbit, I will say. I don’t think it would ever have occurred to me to have that conversation, because I just would assume that I wouldn’t get an answer. And that might be really, really unfair. I might ask you to cut this out later. I had no idea. I still don’t really have an idea for my original trilogy what sales were expected. I didn’t get my first royalty statement until about this time last year. And so two years after the first book was published. So I had no idea how much I’d sold until a year ago. And it wasn’t as horrendous as I thought it was going to be, but it was less than New Scott, for sure. I’m a big fan of the three books on the three books. And yeah, it’s not great. But I have no idea whether that’s how that compares to the small advance that I got. I don’t know whether they’ve made money on me, even if I haven’t out-earned my royalties and probably won’t ever on that.
[00:44:34.550] – Sunyi
They probably have made money on you. I mean, the point at which they start making money is quite low, to be honest. Like lower than you think always, because you get like 100K advance and you sell 45K paperback copies, which is 45 grand, then they break even. And if you sell 66 or something, that’s when you would roughly earn out. But it’s better than that. I mean, he is more generous than his estimate.
[00:44:58.990] – Scott
Yeah. Generally speaking, I think they wait. And I mean, they’ve been around forever. So theoretically, if they know any numbers, they know this number. They wait their advance versus their planned sales slash print run, et cetera, very heavily in their favor to where I believe they make money on just about everybody. Just by virtue of putting a book in their catalog and maybe shipping it to stores, they make their money back. Whether it does well for the author or not, they at least make their money back.
[00:45:33.420] – Sunyi
They hold back quite a lot for returns as well. I think Scott and I are both surprised by that. I think it’s something like, Macmillan was sitting on 38k of sales that they were holding back as reserve against return. I did get a royalty check from Tor in May, and it was for $42, because they just have a big pot that they’re sat on in case they have to pulverize a big chunk of my books.
[00:46:01.130] – Scott
As far as I can tell, though, that reserve against return is pretty formulaic, but not always the same from author to author, and nobody necessarily understands on the author, at least as far as I’ve seen on the author agent side, what they’re holding back and why and when that’s going to be released other than it should be less the next time as the- Yeah.
[00:46:24.420] – Sunyi
One thing I will throw out is I think if you get the chance as an author, this is just more for the listeners than Holly specifically just to try and get a time limit put on reserve against returns. I think, Macmillan has a very high reserve, but they can only sit on it for three months, and after that they have to release it and actually pay you. But for some one of my author friends, there is no time limit on her reserve against returns. So the Penguin could just sit on it forever.
[00:46:53.540] – Holly
Wow. That doesn’t seem right at all. No, it doesn’t. We’ll pay.
[00:47:01.090] – Scott
You this money, except- What in this industry? Yeah. I hadn’t thought about that. I hadn’t considered that as a target contract inclusion. So that’s a good point. Going back to something we talked about a bit earlier, the elevator pitch, the one-liner, a high concept, whatever you want to call it. Being that you’ve spent a whole bunch of time in the script world and TV and film and now novels, and you obviously identified a difference between your first trilogy and now this work that you’ve just sold on a very good… Well, I shouldn’t say very good because that’s going to be misconstrued a.
[00:47:45.750] – Sunyi
Positive- Very good is.
[00:47:47.360] – Scott
Six-figure, isn’t it?
[00:47:48.820] – Holly
Yeah. Is it very good.
[00:47:50.280] – Scott
Or good? I don’t know.
[00:47:51.810] – Holly
Good.
[00:47:52.620] – Sunyi
Is up to 99k, so very good is six-figure.
[00:47:55.390] – Scott
Yeah. So anyway, I’m not going to try to categorize your deal, but a larger deal, one that made you happy, could you take a shot at telling us what makes a good elevator pitch? Specifically in context of what qualities of a story fit well in a short/compelling elevator pitch? That’s an unfair question to spring on you, and it might be better in a long-form answer. So if that’s the case, feel free to say so, and I will be looking anxiously for your blog post.
[00:48:39.390] – Holly
I think there are lots of different answers to that question, I suppose, the problem. The way that I went at it the second time round was that instead of coming up with an idea, it was like, Oh, maybe there’s a world where when you dream, you go into a totally different universe. I sat down and thought, Okay, what are… Retellings are really hot right now. This is going to sound really cynical. Retelling is really hot right now, but Greek retellings and Roman retellings have been done to death. And I am not the person to tell those anyway because I don’t love them like other authors do. So what is the retelling that I would love to write if I could write a retelling, given the are super trendy? And I’ve always been a massive Tudor nerd. So I was like, Okay, is there a Tudor retelling that I can tell that feels me? And a fantasy retelling of The Six Wives and Henry VIII felt very me, but also felt very marketable. So I literally started my entire idea from that elevator pitch, and I grew it out from there, rather than coming up with a lot of different elements and then smushing them together into a smushier elevator pitch, I suppose.
[00:50:05.330] – Holly
That was how I did it. I think that the elevator pitches that I have heard that have really made me sit up have been the ones that… This is a TV phrase, a same but different. So things that make me immediately go, Oh, I know that that is going to be like that other book that I really loved, but it’s got a different twist, so I know I’m not going to be reading a copycat book.
[00:50:33.600] – Holly
I think pictures that do that in some way are the ones that feel hooky and commercial and marketable at the moment, I would say. You guys may disagree.
[00:50:47.130] – Scott
No, I completely agree.
[00:50:48.570] – Sunyi
No, I find that interesting. I think Scott may have dropped out. I was going to ask one question off that very quickly, though, which is, do you think of your book as a retelling? I know that’s a bit of a weird question, but just because I remember when I saw the announcement online, I thought, Oh, it’s like a historical fantasy. There are some books I’ve seen and I thought, Oh, it could actually.
[00:51:06.530] – Holly
Be- Yeah, it is a historical fantasy, but I do think of it as a.
[00:51:09.300] – Sunyi
Retelling because- It’s a.
[00:51:10.440] – Holly
Marketing term. -the characters have the same names as the real-life people did. There are a lot of similarities in terms of the events that happen, a nod to what happened in real life or a twist on what happened in real-life. So, yeah, I do think.
[00:51:31.330] – Sunyi
It’s- I think it’s about setting expectations, isn’t it? It’s saying, yeah, there’s a historical basis, but you can expect there to be changes and they are deliberate. Not just me not knowing history, but it’s like a deliberate choice to reshape the story. Yeah. I think we’ve lost Scott, but that’s okay because we’re probably close to the end of our time. Can I ask you if you can tell readers where to find you, where your books are, and a general plug about yourself?
[00:52:00.600] – Holly
I can hear.
[00:52:02.420] – Scott
You, Scott. Oh, you can? Okay.
[00:52:04.300] – Holly
So- Oh, I can’t.
[00:52:05.330] – Sunyi
-then you can’t hear me. Maybe it’s my connection.
[00:52:08.440] – Scott
That’s okay. Just roll with it. I’m good. That was a very good answer.
[00:52:12.970] – Holly
I can be found at www. Hollyrace. Com, my Instagram and my TikTok. I’m not on TikTok very much, but they can be found at holly_race. Com. And I am on X as which is my name, spelt backwards, but I’m not really on there anymore. My books that can be bought so far are Midnights twins, A Gathering Midnight and Midnight, Dark and Golden, and they are Y. A. Urban fantasy and The Tudor, Adult fantasy that is coming out May 2025 is called Six, Wild Crowns. And if you would add it to Goodreads, I would be eternally grateful. I have no idea if it makes any difference to sales, but let’s go with it.
[00:52:59.040] – Scott
Can’t hurt, right? You’ve been.
[00:53:00.440] – Sunyi
Listening to the publishing radio podcast with Sonia Dean and Scott Drakeford. Tune in next time for more in-depth discussion on everything publishing industry. See you later.
[00:53:12.650] – Scott
Thank you. Thank you.
Publishing Rodeo Podcast 