Ready to navigate the publishing landscape and want some practical advice? Mary Kole is joined by writing expert John Matthew Fox to chat about his work helping authors and founding his company, Bookfox. Conversation topics include the different publishing paths available to writers, the benefits and drawbacks of traditional vs. self-publishing, the challenges of effectively marketing one's work, and going beyond commercial success.

Transcript for conversation with john matthew fox:

Mary (00:01):

Hello everybody. Welcome to The Good Story Podcast. I am Mary Kole and with me today, I have my nemesis and competitor. No I'm just kidding. A fellow editorial person, writing expert, writing guidebook-person, author John Matthew Fox. Take it away. Tell us about yourself.

John (00:48):

Wow, I've never been introduced as a nemesis slash competitor. Honestly, I kind of like it. I think that's like life goals. I want to be introduced that way every time now.

Mary (00:59):

Well, we tell writers that we want to make the antagonist three dimensional and compelling, and so now you can be a super villain, but in your own mind and heart, you are the hero of this story.

John (01:13):

So you're not just telling people to introduce conflict in their story, you're showing how to do it on a podcast. Well done.

Mary (01:19):

Words only do so much.

John (01:26):

Well, thanks for that intro. So I'm John Matthew Fox and I've been helping writers write better books at Bookfox since 2006, which, gosh, that's a long time to be blogging since 2006. So I've been doing this full time for the last eight years now, and I basically help authors with a bunch of courses I have through Bookfox Academy. I also do developmental editing for anything fiction related, short stories, novels, children's books. And I recently started up a publishing company Bookfox Press to help authors specifically writing children's books. It takes a lot more work to get illustrations done and we want to make that process easier for everybody. And I've also started up a publicity branch too, and we have several marketers and publicists on our team that people can hire and work with to help get the word out because it's one thing to publish and it's something entirely different to actually get readers for your book.

Mary (02:24):

That discoverability marketing piece is so I think underserved and also considered when writers are just, they have an idea, they're fixated on getting the book, the book, the book, and then what?

John (02:40):

Well, so much work to write the book and so much work to edit the book and so much work to publish the book. And when writers reach that, they're like, I'm done. And you're like, oh, this is pretty early in the journey still; marketing is such a huge part of the writing life, unfortunately, but I think we'd prefer to in our caves and be creative, but no one's going to read your creativity unless you can get the word out well.

Mary (03:05):

And do you work primarily with writers whose aim it is to publish traditionally or those who have sort of taken matters into their own hands and decided to independently publish?

John (03:17):

I work with both and I try to give counsel to people on whether their particular book is better suited for one or the other. I had a buddy who was writing kind of a poetic book that was more literary fiction and I'm like, this feels like you should traditionally publish because it's really hard to market a book like this. A small press would do you really well because they have the right avenues and channels to promote your book to their audience. Well, I was working with someone else who was writing something firmly within a genre, the sci-fi genre, and I'm like, you can market the heck out of this so well, you should definitely do self-publishing. Your book is designed for it.

So I think a lot of writers think of there's some sort of hierarchy between traditional publishing and self-publishing. I don't see that hierarchy at all. You can self-publish to a very high level. The trick is what's right for you as an author, what's right for you to do and what's right for this particular book? Is it going to be easy to self-publish or is it going to be an absolute nightmare to self-publish? And also, is it going to be easy to get a traditional publishing deal that's really high concept, or is it just going to be you're knocking on doors forever and you'd be better off going the self-publishing route? So yeah, there are definitely benefits and drawbacks to doing both.

Mary (04:37):

I really do love this idea of thinking about not only what's right for the author, but from project to project because not every idea, not every project, not every category, not every genre is going to have the same path.

John (04:50):

That's right, yeah. You don't just have to self-publish everything and you don't just have to traditionally publish everything. And I've seen a lot of big name authors who have done a lot of traditional publishing and now they're like, huh, let's try Kickstarter or let's try self-publishing route cuz I have the audience already. I have the resources I can and do what most of the stuff that traditional publishing does for me. I can do that on my own.

Mary (05:21):

And it's easier and more beautiful and seamless than ever, I would say. There are so many different tools and programs to self-publish except children's books as you said, picture books specifically highly illustrated, full bleed, all of that stuff. Those tend to be some of the most difficult. You said nightmare. We'll say nightmare because you said nightmare, but so that was a recent offshoot of your many business ventures and how did you come around to that?

John (05:56):

I'd been doing editing for children's book authors for a long time and I saw them being taken advantage of by these publishing companies that charged way too much and the illustrations weren't any good and they took their rights and then didn't give them any money on the backend. I'm like, I can do a much better job taking care of my clients than these dirty companies are. So it was kind of just helping the people I was already editing for be like, listen, I have better context with illustrators. I can treat them right. I can give them all the money on the backend. I can have an author-first policy and take care of them. I didn't find that all of my novel clients needed that sort of help just because, I don't know, it's a lot easier to self-publish your own novel. I mean you need a copywriter or you need a copy edit, which I was providing for them already. And you need a cover designer, which I've written about a book box and then you're kind of good to go. But for children's books, yeah, like you said, it's a lot more difficult.

Mary (06:56):

Because not only illustrations, but you have to do layout, you have to consider the page turns and kind of the pagination of all the materials, not just the story itself, but do you have back matter, after matter and binding options. All of that stuff can really be sort of tough to a tough entry point, but a lot of people show up and they say, this is what I want to do. I see this beautiful object. I maybe have kids, grandkids, I'm very inspired, and then they hit kind of a brick wall. So I do want to make a distinction though. So you were saying a lot of these publishing companies were charging a lot of money. So here we're talking about pay to play, vanity, hybrid publishing models. This is sort of a gray area in between I'm doing everything myself and I have a traditional book deal and the publisher is doing everything for me. Some writers aren't very aware of what happens in between and where some of these shysters but also some legitimate companies live. Can you tell me more about that?

John (08:08):

Yeah, I think I would divide hybrid publishing into two distinct categories. You have hybrid publishers who are just pretending to be hybrid to get your money, and really what they are is a vanity press, but that doesn't have the same ring to it does it? So they call themselves hybrid, but it's just purely pay to play. And then you have a breed of hybrid publishing companies, which are really a lot more like a traditional publisher, but they just want to take some of the risk off of publishing your book. So they ask for money to handle the copy editing and cover design, but then they have much fairer rates for they give you a higher rate on the backend.

Mary (08:48):

So that means a royalty share. You're still entitled to royalties once the book starts selling.

John (08:54):

Yeah. So traditional publishing give you between 10 to 15% loyalties on the backend. While with some of these hybrid publishing companies, you can negotiate a lot higher than that. I've heard of 30%, I've heard of 50%. So there are certainly ethical hybrid publishing companies out there, but of course, like you said, there's lots of unethical ones as well. And I want to point out one other category of publisher that doesn't really neatly fit into vanity publishing or hybrid publishing or traditional publishing. And this, I mean it's probably most similar to high-end vanity publishing, but really it's, I would call it high-end business publishing. And it's people who have some sort of platform and they want to get a speaking career. And so these companies will charge them $60-70,000 to publish a book at a very high level and do a lot of marketing work for them, make it look like it's a traditional publisher. Now that seems like a ridiculous amount of money, but if you can go on the circuit and get speaking engagements because of that book, you can make that back in a year.

Mary (10:04):

Yeah, that's speaking fees basically.

John (10:07):

Yeah. So it's not really vanity publishing, it's not really hybrid publishing, it's something else. It's like a completely different strategy. I don't really have a name for it, but I know that it exists.

Mary (10:17):

And a good use case would be, for example, high level thought leadership, maybe a marketing guru let's say, or a business guru who is speaking to CEOs and just wants something to create the perception of credibility because a beautiful hardcover book with a glossy dust jacket, all the bells and whistles really, really does that provides synergy for the message and they have something to sell in the back of the room after the talk. Something that people can carry around, just that object, whether it is produced by a hybrid publisher, whether it's produced by a traditional publisher or via self-publishing, there is some gravitas to that object. And while you say the prices for these things might seem exorbitant at that level, it's really a drop in the bucket and it's part of a strategy. But about this particular needle that we're threading here, I think the secret is that pre-existing network, you are already booked as a keynote speaker for a specific audience. This is not a strategy for everybody. This is an executive coach for an audience of CEOs. They have that network. They belong to professional organizations. They probably already have a newsletter at least to disseminate their ideas.

John (11:43):

Yeah. And I would add as well, it works much better for nonfiction than for fiction, and it works much better if the book is a gateway to other services, speaking engagements or something else. The book is a calling card to funnel people into a whole bunch of other things.

Mary (12:00):

They have a mastermind, they have executive coaching. I am running with this executive coach consultant avatar that I have in my head. So you've written books. Oh wait, I did want to say so for Bookfox, for Bookfox Press, where you work with these authors directly, is it sort of like a project manager role where you're tying together all of your expertise but all of your connections as well?

John (12:35):

I hired someone to handle all of that part of it, so I'm not doing it directly. My main role is as the developmental editor and I help them write a better story and then I sort of hand it off to someone who handles all the nitty gritty of finding the right illustrator, doing all the copy editing, doing the formatting, doing the ISBNs, all of that work and that communication with the author. I knew I couldn't handle it and still do all of the Bookfox stuff. So I have four people on my team now and Courtney is the one that handles Bookfox Press.

Mary (13:10):

Amazing. And just for people who are thinking about getting a picture book published traditionally, whether with someone like you, whether independently, well actually not independently at all, how much of a say does the author have in the illustration selection and feedback on the illustrations process?

John (13:35):

Yeah, that's a great question. People are often scared like, oh, what if I don't like my illustrator? And that's why we have a really big bank of illustrators. We work with 25 different illustrators of vastly different styles. Everything from watercolor to super bright, almost cartoony colors to more traditional muted. I mean, we just have a lot of different styles and we'll say, listen, for your book, we think this might be the right illustrator, and if they like that, great. If not, okay, well look at these two illustrators. Do you like one of their works better? And then during the process, it's very much like a collaboration. The illustrator will say, okay, I think the page breakup should be like this. Let me do sketches and lay everything out without color and show it to you and see if that's all right. And the author can say, oh, I want these changes made great. I'll make those changes. And then they start the coloring process and yeah, it's very involved back and forth. It's not like the illustrator does it all and says, here you go. And the other's like, wait, no, I want different stuff. It's a collaboration.

Mary (14:47):

And that's more of the traditional publishing model. There, the publisher stands between the author and the illustrator. There's not really a lot of room for collaboration, but in this case, they are the customer, the author is the customer, they are paying for this suite of services, and so they have a little bit more feedback, a little bit more sense of control over the process.

John (15:12):

Well, in traditional publishing, I feel like the illustrators don't want much feedback. They're like, listen, I'm the expert. I am going to draw this the way I want to draw it and you don't tell me anything. I don't want any of your ideas cuz they’re real artists. But they also can be a bit, how shall I say, particular about what they want to make. So I feel like I'm hitting the nice middle ground where it's like, hey, the illustrator's going to come with some ideas, but they're also willing to listen to what the author has to say, and it's more collaborative.

Mary (15:46):

How difficult is it for somebody, and I'm not trying to get a pitch because I think that the services that you provide are great, but logistically as someone who's been through it a number of times with your own projects, with other people's projects, how difficult is it logistically to pull together everything you need to self-publish, just you. Just the lone creator, what all is involved in that and does it take a very specific personality type maybe?

John (16:25):

I think the personality type it takes is someone who's willing to do a lot of marketing because really once you get it published, you have to be willing to do all that stuff. And if you're not good at that, it's really difficult to get any sort of traction. But just with the self-publishing part, I would say it's not difficult to do it badly, right? I mean you have lots of people and they do it pretty quickly, but …

Mary (16:59):

They upload a Word document.

John (17:01):

Yeah, it's not well copy edited or it's not well formatted, or they use the Amazon ISBN, which locks them into that ecosystem and they can't jump to any other platform,

Mary (17:14):

But Amazon gives them out for free. They're so generous.

John (17:19):

And then you're trapped forever. So yeah, it's really easy to self-publish badly or at a lower level. People can do that on their own, but if you really want to do it well, I mean that's where I think hybrid publishing can help you do it at a much higher level than you can do it on your own.

Mary (17:42):

I do think that to your point about some of these vanity presses, they will arrive at a book shaped object for you at great expense to you.

John (17:54):

A book shaped object.

Mary (17:58):

Just a nice, a book shaped object. But then what? Is it going to be a career asset for you? Is it going to go anywhere? Is your audience is going to interpret it well if you manage to get it across to them because quality, we are in a glut of book shaped objects. We're in a glut of well-published and not so well-published books. Material content just as demand for attention is ramping up from TikTok and all of these other sinkholes, we are still competing for that entertainment attention, that content attention with everything. And so I would say, and I have a feeling you might agree with me, that it would behoove anyone whether they self-publish, whether they hybrid- publish whatever to try and arrive at the best possible book shaped object full of actual book content that they possibly can.

John (19:03):

Yeah, there is a difference between printing and publishing. A lot of people don't recognize they're different.

Mary (19:09):

Put it on a bumper sticker.

John (19:11):

I mean printing is just making the book shaped object, and so you have these objects now, but publishing is a whole process of not just making the book shaped object, but getting it into the hands of readers and spreading the word and marketing and building a community around it and doing stuff after the book is printed. So if authors don't understand that distinction, they can be really happy with printing but really they should be shooting for publishing.

Mary (19:43):

And so I recently had a guest, Jenn Hanson-dePaula, fabulous marketing consultant, sort of similar because I am trying to talk more about publishing and say, you got to hold your nose and do it. It would be even better if you could get to a mindset where it's not so odious to you, but if somebody is really reluctant to market or they don't know where to start, can you give me a couple of tips for dipping the toe in the water?

John (20:12):

I think the first thing is to change your mindset. Marketing has sort of this dirty ring to it, and a lot of authors sort of screw up their nose and be like, that stinks. I don't want to do that. I would try to redefine marketing for them as this is a way to share your book with others. You wrote this wonderful book, you love this book. If you love it, you want it to live, you want other people to interact with it and learn its wisdom and enjoy its pleasures. How do you do that? Okay, so maybe make up a different term. If marketing stinks that much to you, make up a different term. I'm going to work on sharing my book with others.

Mary (20:56):

And a rainbow appears over your head when you say it.

John (21:00):

That sounds very noble and good. So how do you do that? Once you change your mindset, then you can start to think about more practical things. I mean, I've made a whole 45 video course about how to market your book. It's one of the ones in Bookfox Academy, it's called Your First Bestseller. So it's hard to distill some tips down from that.

Mary (21:26):

Of course. I think that's part of why some writers, they don't even want to approach it because there are so many different levers available to pull. You almost don't know where to start.

John (21:39):

Yeah, I'd say start wherever you feel most comfortable. If you really hate social media, then don't do social media. I mean everyone says, oh, do an Instagram, do a TikTok, do this, do that. But there is at least a one year runway to get up and running, and I'm talking about making stuff every single day before you start to see some payoff there. So if your book is being published this month and you're starting up on Instagram this month, you're about a year too late. Don't do it. Don't do it. There are far better ways to market your book at this point that'll get you limited rewards doing something like that.

Mary (22:20):

I really would like for you to repeat the one year runway idea louder for the people in the back.

John (22:28):

Yeah, people underestimate the amount of time it takes to get traction, but it's this steep trajectory. Once you get traction, it happens really quickly. I have 133,000 followers on TikTok and man, it took me about a year to get that, but the amount of time it took me to get to 10,000 I think was almost four months, but then four months to the full year, you just get, it really increases exponentially.

Mary (23:02):

You do get that traction, but I think another stumbling block is the consistency piece, especially during that year when you're not seeing results, you're not seeing the rewards of this sweaty content creation process where you don't know what you're doing and you're not getting validation back and how do we keep our motivation up during that ramp up?

John (23:29):

That's a great question, which I'm not sure I have the answer to because here's the trouble with writers is we write because we enjoy writing and we might not enjoy “sharing our book with others.” The process of doing the marketing, I said the M word, but yes, marketing the process of doing the marketing, and I'm sympathetic to that. I get that maybe that's not your most favorite thing to do in the universe, but there's got to be some aspect of marketing that is less odious to you, some aspect of marketing. Then you think, oh, that jives with what I do. It's not that difficult for me or I enjoy it. Whether that be being really involved on Reddit communities on the same topic of your book, whether that be going to more in-person events around you and talking to people and making relationships with people who end up buying your book. There's got to be some avenue that fits with who you are as a person.

Mary (24:34):

The Reddit will eat you alive if you go on there and start schilling on day one. No matter how specialized the subreddit you're on, Reddit is not for the faint of heart unless you are already on Reddit, on Discord, wherever an active and contributive participant in that community. You can't show up one day and be like, hey there fellow kids, do I have a story for you? They will eat you alive.

John (25:06):

Yeah. So it should be something that you enjoy, something that you're familiar with and that doesn't feel painful to do because if it feels painful, you're just not going to last at it long enough to make an actual dent in your sales.

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Mary (26:02):

So let's take a hard pivot and I want—marketing, schmarketing, sharing your book with others, whatever. I would love to talk about your own book and some of your work as a developmental editor and craft connoisseur because it really does seem like all of these disparate things that you do are all connected back to that as a conduit.

John (26:26):

Yeah, I mean I got into Bookfox because I love books and I love stories and I love helping people with stories. So that's where my heart is, and I'm just doing all of this publishing and marketing stuff because I realize that's the best way to serve people once I've helped them with stories. But yeah, I have a book called The Linchpin Writer published a year and a half ago, and it basically helps people with the linchpin moments in their book, meaning the absolute key points where if you mess it up, the reader's not going to enjoy your book. So things like the ending, the beginning, the very first line of dialogue, very first time you describe a character, if you have a romantic scene, making sure you nail that and it's not cheesy or yawn-inducing, things like describing a place, how do you do that well in a way that creates wonder rather than creates someone skipping to the next page because they’re bored with your description? So I'm just trying to help authors with just these really key points in their book.

Mary (27:33):

So there's a lot of structure, narrative, plot theory out there. We have the 15 beats from Save the Cat and Save the Cat Writes a Novel and Save the Cat Writes a YA Novel and that kind of approach. We have Eric Edsons 22 part Story Solution. John Truby got in there. Story Grid is a grid, literal grid. It's gigantic and very elaborate. So there are a lot of ideas, writer's journey, hero's journey, all of that. Anyway, focus, there is a lot out there and so I like this approach of the linchpin moments because it seems a little bit more malleable in terms of being less prescriptive and more adaptable to an individual story. How did you identify what you consider to be the linchpin moments?

John (28:32):

Well, first of all, I have an ax to grind with all those formulaic people. I really don't like them. I tried reading Save the Cat and when it gets to the granular level on page 76, make sure this plot point happens and I'm like, ew.

Mary (28:53):

We are a big fan of Jessica Brody here in Mary Land, which is different from Maryland, the state. I should really think before I speak, but that horse has left the barn. We are, but to your point, I think both truths can be true. Oh my God, that yes, it does help to think in a structured kind of even formulaic the F word, right? Formulaic way about plot. But does it have to be on page 76? So that gives you the yuck. Tell me more about that.

John (29:34):

Yeah, I mean I've made plenty of videos and blog posts about structure and I dip my toes into that, but I think ultimately you want a book. Narrative shapes can be a lot more malleable than a lot of these books prescribe. So I want to give a little bit of leeway and a little bit of freedom to authors who should be inspired, be inspired by some of the points, put them deep in your subconscious, but if you have 'em at the front of your brain when trying to write a book, the book's going to come out a little stilted. I think they're good to know, they're good to know. And then forget so your unconscious can use them, but your conscious mind isn't like, let me do this now.

Mary (30:17):

I have definitely run into writers who have maybe box checked all of the energy and originality out of their work because they do follow some of these rubrics to the letter. We don't have the spirit of the story, we have the letter of the story, and once they're done checking all those boxes, they wonder why it doesn't achieve liftoff.

John (30:44):

Yeah, it reminds me of a question, would you rather write a story with passion and heat or one that is structurally perfect? And for me, I'd rather read and write a book with heat and passion, but maybe it's a little messy, a little flawed than write something which is technically perfect but lacks the energy and the soul of the writing. But that's a question for the authors who are listening, right? If you go, oh, I want to write the perfect structural book, then go for that. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. I would tilt the other direction.

Mary (31:21):

And that's not to say that you don't try it once, try it. People who don't outline their work, I am just like, try it. You don't know. You don't know until you try it, all you have to lose is a couple hours of your time, right? Because there is good stuff that comes from, like you said, internalizing story structure, maybe tucking it away in your subconscious, try it, try writing a beat sheet, try writing a novel and checking those boxes and getting comfortable with structuring something. It doesn't have to be what you do for every project, just like every project doesn't get the same publishing path

So how did you go about, going back to a question from seven digressions ago, how did you go about selecting which linchpin moments and they were my digressions. Nothing on you, sir. How did you go about selecting … you're sifting through everything that you know about story. How did you pick and choose?

John (32:24):

I picked and choose because I have almost a thousand blog posts at Bookfox and the ones that people found most helpful or really resonated or ones that still stuck in my mind as topics that were super important for authors. In a way, I sort of tested all of this stuff with the blog and saw what worked best for authors and then I sort of took some of that best information and connected it with stories. I felt like every single chapter in this book has some sort of real life story that I've gone through in my writing life that illustrates this particular craft point. So if it had a story and if it was something I'd seen really connected with authors and helped authors before then I thought, okay, it fits in this book.

Mary (33:15):

So you sort of reverse engineered this book from user data. You looked at comments, engagements and you said, Hey, these are the, I forget how many chapters there are. It's a fabulous book, The Linchpin Writer, but you parceled it out into X number of chapters and you put a guide together.

John (33:39):

Yeah, it was definitely listening to what helped people and listening to authors through the almost 20 years of doing this that helped create the book. I feel like listen, a lot of books like writing books, authors, they write a couple books and they're like, you know what? I think I can teach how this works, but maybe they haven't done a lot of teaching before or maybe it's been at the undergraduate level. I don't know. Sometimes these writing books, they come out a little bit half formed, maybe there's a lot of them that seem very similar to other books out there, and I'm like, okay, I want to write something that doesn't exist, that's a little more advanced than your typical, oh, here's how to do plot, howdy-duty-doo. I feel like that's what I do with my blog and with my YouTube as well as I'm not trying to speak to the beginning level writer. I'm trying to speak to writing a writer who reads some blogs and reads some craft books and has some writing under their belt. What's the next level up from there? How do I talk to medium career writers, mid-career writers and help them along the journey? Only so much work you can do working with beginning writers, right? Let's move a little bit into more complex stuff and even I think my book is still helpful to beginning writers, but they're getting something which is different than all the other stuff out there. I'm trying not to repeat other people.

Mary (35:16):

I have so many thoughts, including I think it's very astute that once a writer writes a lot, they want to put their name on a writing guide and sort of contribute to the cannon. I can think of several examples, and I'm not going to name names, but one of them is our book club pick for tomorrow. So I'm especially fired up about this. Beautiful novelist, wonderful. The writing guide, not so much, but it's a brand extension. We are now a thought leader in the publishing world. I also validate, I think, not that you need my validation, but this need for sort of more advanced craft books because there are only so many ways that you can rehash the same five topics of character, plot, world building, voice, and I really think it's admirable that you are speaking to writers who want a little bit more. They don't need the handholding, they need the now what.

John (36:19):

Yeah, and to go back to your point about great authors who write a mediocre teaching book, craft book, I think that they're very different skills. You could be the best writer in the universe but not be very good at communicating how you do it or teaching people how to do it in their own book. And I think that reverse is true too. You could be the best craft teacher in the universe and not be that great of a writer. They're just very different skillsets and that's why you see, if you look at developmental editors in the publishing industry who work in New York at the very best developmental editors in the world, a lot of them aren't writers. They're just really, really good readers. So be okay with people who have different skill sets. I have people come to me and be like, well, if you haven't written a New York Times bestselling book, I don't think you have anything to teach me. And I'm like, well, for one, I have lots of friends who are the most amazing literary writers of all time and they just don't sell a lot of copies. So the idea that writing a bestselling book is a mark of being the best writer is simply not true. Sometimes they're not very good writers at all, but they're very good at structure and plot and mystery and easy pleasures.

Mary (37:43):

Easy pleasures. I like my pleasures difficult. No, I was reading the book, The Plot, it came out in 2021 and it has a lot in common with About the Author and Yellowface, which have all sort of tread this structure of a writer stumbles into a wonderful plot and they steal it and the ramifications and the internal justifications and all of that. It's so funny. I finished it last night and it had so much to do with this. Okay, what is it about this plot that the author stole that made it an instant New York Times bestseller compared to other plots? And is it really about the writing? Is it about just the consumability of the story? So this is very timely and I do think that there is a big difference between the sort of stuff, politics aside, the internal mechanics of the list. We know which one we're talking about aside. I do think that there is a certain type of book that tends to receive that kind of high concept attention, that book club selection attention. And to your point, certain books just shouldn't expect to go on the same journey.

John (39:04):

Yeah. Some authors come to me with a particular type of book and they're like, I want to be a bestseller. And I'm like, well, you didn't write the type of book that is a bestseller. You wrote a book that fulfills a very specific niche. It's very well written. It's going to sell a couple thousand copies at best, and you should be happy with that, right? Not every book is destined to become a bestseller. If you wanted to write a completely different book and I could teach you how to write that type of book, okay, that will become, you have a chance of becoming a bestseller. But personally, I don't want to write that type of book. I have very specific, I'm sending out two novels now and neither one of them are particularly marketable, but they're the books I wanted to write.

That's exactly what I wanted to write, and I know it's not going to have a huge audience and I'm fine with that, but authors sometimes have these pipe dreams and a mismatch between the book they wrote and their marketing expectations for it. And then the other thing is my wife's a big reader. She reads like 150 books a year and she reads very different books than I do. She reads books that sell a lot of copies and she always tells me the plot and I'm like, yeah, I can see why a lot of people want to read that. And then I tell her the plot of what I'm reading, and she's like, okay, and there are fewer people—

Mary (40:22):

She’s asleep. She doesn't even respond because she's asleep.

John (40:26):

There are just fewer people that want to read some concepts or books that are difficult to describe. You're like, okay, well it's going to be a really hard time selling that book, and that's fine. Both books should exist. I love that all those books exist.

Mary (40:41):

So I'm going to pin you to the mat a little bit on describing high concept. So you just said, and I think that's a great entry point. Some books are hard to describe. You have to really sit and try to engage and try to communicate the themes and anyway, bestselling type books, the kind that your wife tells you about don't tend to have that same hurdle. One of the hallmarks of a high concept premise, at least to me the way I think about it is it's easy to present and people hear it and they get it. So what's your definition?

John (41:21):

It's something you can describe in a single sentence that makes a person say, I want to read that. It's an idea they haven't heard before. It's concise. You can do it in a single sentence and it's immediately like, Ooh, I am intrigued. Give me the book now. And the best way to do this is get a subscription to Publisher's Marketplace. You get an email once a week with 150 books that recently sold, go through and read their one to two sentence descriptions of every single book. That's pretty much the definition of high concept. You go through theirs, I feel like 90% of them are pretty high concept, and you'll know the ones that are high concept like, oh, I wish that was out now rather than coming out a year and a half from now.

Mary (42:09):

You'll also know it by the language “Good deal” and significant deal and major deal.

John (42:14):

This is true.

Mary (42:17):

Which are for people who have not yet subscribed to Publisher's Marketplace, despite my years of telling you to just go ahead and do it. Those are the notations for the genteel notations for how much money the publisher spent.

John (42:32):

Yeah, yeah. I love that. They're like, we're not going to tell you directly. We're going to give you a code and then you have to look up what it means.

Mary (42:38):

There's a key. There is literally a key where the dirty dollar amounts are actually mentioned.

John (42:45):

Yes, I forget there's one 500,000 and up, which is significant.

Mary (42:49):

Significant actually I think major is 250 to 500 and significant is 500 and up or maybe significant is just seven figures. Anyway. Sometimes they will say in a seven figure deal as if you didn't know already by all the sub rights and foreign rights and movies option sales.

John (43:09):

But it really is an excellent education, and honestly, if every writer before they figured out what their novel is about, just read Publisher's Marketplace for a month and got a sense of all the books being published right now, you'd probably come up with a better book idea.

Mary (43:27):

I think what is so key about what you're saying is that it's not about the statement, it's not about the premise statement, it's about what the premise statement conveys. So if you've written a quiet intergenerational coming of age saga that doesn't have that, we decided to reanimate dinosaurs from DNA, that's Jurassic Park. But if you don't have that, if that's not the story that you've written, you're not going to be able to make it into that by composing the perfect premise statement. It's not like a shibboleth that gets you an agent. A lot of people focus, a lot of writers I think focus on the query. They focus on the logline, they focus on all of these pitch related elements, submission elements, and think, man, if I can just add some sizzle to this pitch that's going to get my story, which is not at all sizzly, and that's fine. It's not a sizzler. It's going to get it across the transom in a big way.

John (44:35):

First of all, excellent use of the word shibboleth. Well done.

Mary (44:40):

I used to watch a lot of West Wing and had to look it up, and that is how I learned it.

John (44:46):

Two, great job using the word sizzler in a non-restaurant related way. Good job. So yeah, I totally agree with all that, and I would say that if you have written a quiet intergenerational saga, then the way that you make people want to read it is not with that crazy log line, which is it's the sizzler and exciting. It's by comparing it to two books that are great. Then authors are like, or readers are like, oh, I liked both of those books. That's what this is. So you can create excitement in other ways. If you don't have a high concept book, which you might not, you create it by comparing it to other non high concept books that people enjoyed.

Mary (45:30):

Are titles as big a deal in publishing as writers make them out to be when they obsess about that one sentence in the query letter?

John (45:42):

Well, first of all, recognize that a comp title is more about convincing the agent that you're not an idiot than it's about picking the right comp title, right? Because 90% of the time the agent's going to go with different comp titles, right?

Mary (45:57):

Yes. The agents absolutely pick their own comps, and it is a rare day when one of yours gets reused.

John (46:04):

Totally. So take the pressure off of yourself. All you have to do is pick a comp title that shows the industry. You're not picking Harry Potter as your comp title, something incredibly obvious or incredibly famous. Pick mid-level books that the agent probably has heard of, but maybe didn't sell a gazillion copies that have just something in common with your book, and the agent will think, all right, this is the person I can work with.

Mary (46:34):

You know what? This was the perfect response. It articulated something that it just so blazingly obvious, but I have never heard anybody express in quite this way before. Yes, if you're pitching Twilight meets The Da Vinci Code meets whatever it conveys unrealistic expectations. If you pitch something that is maybe a bit more niche, maybe hit the list for one week so you know about it and is recent within the last three years, an agent's going to say, this person doesn't just want to write a book. They have read a book. At least one.

John (47:15):

Yeah. Yeah. It's much more a way to convince the agent who you are, to tell them who you are. I mean, yes, it does tell them something about the book, obviously, but you're trying to pass this bar to convince them I've got realistic expectations and I know what I'm doing in this industry.

Mary (47:35):

How does somebody, so what I love about you is your very holistic view of every writer, every project which you have to have if you serve writers, is if you work as a developmental editor and you strive to see the integrity of their idea and who they are as a person, their intentions, all of that. If somebody is suffering from unrealistic expectation itis, which a lot of writers do, we just naturally do. This is the dream of our heart, and why wouldn't our dream shoot off into the stratosphere? At the same time, we feel like hacks and imposter syndrome, and we are illiterate sometimes in our writing, but how does somebody come to peace with some of these ridiculous expectations and still find the motivation to keep going? How does that maturity process happen for a writer?

John (48:39):

Redefine what success means. Success for a lot of authors means having their book made into a movie, getting on a bestseller list, having it bought by a traditional publisher and getting a big advance. That is not what success should look like. I mean, yeah, that's great if it happens, but think about all the other different ways you can define success that I went to an a WP panel where someone talked about how his book, someone contacted him and said, listen, my mother was dying. I took your book and I read it to her, and we read your book together for the day and a half before she died, and we laughed. We laughed about it, we cried over it.

Getting an email that is worth, that is the definition of success. Your book touched this person and her mother in her final days. How wonderful is that? And I've gotten lots of emails from people saying, oh, I love this thing about your short story. I struggled with this in my family, or it makes this really deep emotional impact. To me, the definition of success is one person reaching out and say, your book really touched me. It really connected with me. That's what success is, and if you do that, you're going to feel much happier about yourself as an author and feel much happier, happier about your career and feel like you are successful rather than having these crazy expectations of materialistic wealth or fame.

Mary (50:30):

That was a mic drop of an answer if I've ever heard one. That is beautiful. What an honor. You're so right. One of the reasons that we write and read is to connect emotionally to make meaning from life, and this is the ultimate meaning that was made in this beautiful little bubble between reader, mother and book, and that is just, you can't take it to the bank, but it is such a glory to the soul.

John (51:02):

Can't take it to the bank, but I'm sure that author will take it to the grave with him. My book matters.

Mary (51:08):

I did something. I left a mark. I was the butterfly that flapped its wings and halfway around the world it reached somebody. That's beautiful.

John (51:17):

That's right.

Mary (51:19):

Well, I don't know what we can talk about that could possibly top that beautiful anecdote. Thank you. And I think I maybe speak for both of us when I say we will part as friends, or at the very least frenemies.

John (51:38):

Glad we got over the nemesis. We've had a character arc!

Mary (51:43):

A whole, oh, here's one. Does a character have to grow and change?

John (51:50):

No. You have all sorts of static characters. Think of like James Bond, who's a pretty static character.

Mary (51:57):

That's true.

John (51:58):

Like Sherlock Holmes is a pretty static character. If you're writing episodic fiction and the character really doesn't change, and usually it's minor characters who change, right? You'll have the villain who might change in that story or maybe some other minor character around the steadfast character, but if you're not writing episodic fiction, it's usually good to have a character arc. But the trouble is most authors think it needs to be a big character arc, and it doesn't have to be. Sometimes a character arc is very small, sometimes it's a very small epiphany about themselves or a moment of realization. It doesn't have to be a huge change, so work on subtleties in your character arc, and also if your main character is changing, then there's less pressure to have your minor characters have enormous character arcs as well. Sometimes minor characters can be like steadfast characters in your pantheon if your main character as a huge arc.

Mary (52:58):

What I'm hearing you say though is that there should be some proxy for the main character if the main character doesn't change, or perhaps even devolves. There are books like that. Somebody should be experiencing something for that human redemptive or aspirational element.

John (53:16):

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's true. Yes, someone should be, and I also think the refusal to change can be a very interesting dynamic, even if they don't change, because if someone refuses to change when the audience is yearning for them to change, it creates a lot of friction and tension toward the end of the book, which has its own emotional rewards for the reader in the same way that having them actually change would provide a lot of emotional rewards. So there's different ways to get at that emotional reward for the reader. That doesn't have to involve enormous change, and

Mary (53:56):

It all depends on the type of writer you are and the type of book that you are working on.

John (54:03):

Yeah.

Mary (54:04):

Well, a beautiful landing for our interview and a bonus craft tidbit from John Matthew Fox. Where can people find you? Where can the people run for more wisdom?

John (54:18):

My website is the johnfox.com, or you could just Google Bookfox. I'm also on YouTube as Bookfox. That's the social media I've been working on most recently, but I do have an Instagram and BookTok if you want to look at older.

Mary (54:32):

I hear you are big on TikTok.

John (54:35):

Yeah. It was fun to do TikTok. It was an education in some ways for me, learning what younger writers wanted and what they really responded to. It was not what I expected. The videos that blew up, I'm like, huh, wow, okay. That got over a million views. I mean, I just shot that in one minute in my bedroom and didn't even think about it that much, but I guess people loved it sometimes being really, I don't know, just not overthinking. It ends up connecting with people a lot more than really rigid. Let me lay out all the principles.

Mary (55:11):

Maybe for one of your next classes for Bookfox Academy, you can do a curriculum on how writers can stop overthinking.

John (55:22):

Yeah. I guess that sort of fits in with what we were talking about, formulaic fiction and things that are too scheduled out and too outlined. There is a danger to that. I mean, there's a danger in not doing it, and there's also a danger in doing it. So yeah, that'd be interesting to talk about more.

Mary (55:43):

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for your wisdom and just sharing your wealth of knowledge with us. John Matthew Fox is the Bookfox, and I am Mary Kole with Good Story Podcast. Here's to a good story.

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