178: April 2025 Q&A

 

Welcome to the April Q&A episode! Topics discussed include:

  • if indie authors need to hire an editor 2:18

  • authors using AI art 6:41

  • page count vs. word count of your book 13:58

  • what it means when a book dies on submission 15:51

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April 2025 Q&A

Hi friends. Welcome to your big creative life. Welcome to our April Q and A episode. We have some good questions this month. I'm excited to dive into our questions. Just a reminder, you can submit a question for me. The last Tuesday of every month is a Q and A episode. So if you have something that you want me to answer about writing, editing, mindset, querying, or just personal stuff, life stuff, business stuff, whatever, you can pop your question into the form that's in the show notes of this episode. There's a form. It's just a Google form, and it can be anonymous. You do. You don't have to put your name, and I will answer for it you. I will answer it for you. Next month,

I'm doing this episode at home. My brother, this is like so spur of the moment, my brother, who lives in Minneapolis, decided to come visit, decided to come to Charleston to visit me and my husband and my daughter, and it's been really fun. We've been doing doing touristy stuff. He said he's only here for a few days, but I took yesterday off and we had lunch, and tomorrow, he's at the beach right now, actually, but then he's gonna come back and we're gonna go get some barbecue, which I'm excited about. There is barbecue in Minnesota, of course, but there's just, it's not quite the same. Just something about Southern barbecue. And in the South there's so many variations of barbecue. Like, if you get like, Carolina, like North Carolina barbecue, it's gonna look different than like, I don't know, Mississippi barbecue. There's regional differences, which I think are so fascinating, but we have a couple of really good places by us, so we're gonna do that, which I'm excited about. So I'm doing this episode at home while he's off at the beach, and that's all I'm gonna do today for work, which is kind of nice giving myself a little bit of a break to play tourist with him. So we have four questions this month to get to question number one, if I were to indie publish, what I need to get a professional editor, editor, or could I go without?

This is something that every person just has to decide for themselves. You certainly don't need to, in the sense that it's not a requirement. I mean, a potential reader is not going to look at your book and like, look in the book description to be like, Well, did this person hire an editor or not before they decide to read? There's no requirement in any sense. But here's what I will say. So I know that hiring an editor, in some ways, is a luxury and a privilege, because it's a big cost. It's a big financial swing, and yes, editors offer payment plans. We're willing to work with you to spread out the payments. I offer a discount if people book both types of editing with me, like we're willing to work with you, but it still is a significant investment, and I understand that, just speaking from my own experience as an editor, I get it. I've also been a writer who has hired an editor, so I know I've been on both sides of it.

Yeah. So that being said, if you truly can't afford an editor, it's okay. If you are looking for feedback on your story, make sure that you heavily use, or maybe not heavily used, but make sure that you're at least using beta readers, critique partners, a writing group, whatever that looks like, to get feedback on your book. Because what you don't want to do if hiring an editor is not possible for you right now, what you don't want to do is just write your book, edit your book yourself, and then publish it right away. You want to get at least, bare minimum, at least one person to look at it and just make sure that there aren't any big inconsistencies, that something is really not working or hitting the mark like you think it is, because we can't view our own writing objectively. That's part of the value hiring an editor, yes, sir, they're reading it. There's someone else who's reading your book, but they also have the experience to be able to know what kinds of things to flag for you and what kinds of feedback to give you.

So anyways, yeah, just make sure you're at least letting one other person read it and give you feedback. And yeah, so there definitely are things you can do if you can't hire an editor, but if you can afford it, what I would recommend? Well, actually, it's going to depend. So if you feel like you have a pretty good understanding of grammar and punctuation and verb tense and syntax and all of that stuff, or you have someone who can look at it like if you feel like you're covered there, then, okay, maybe it would be a better investment to focus on a developmental type of edit, or something like my manuscript evaluation, which is where I'm giving you feedback on the plot, characters, dialog, conflict, pacing, etc, to help you improve the story.

So maybe that would be a better use of your time and energy. However, if you've done BETA readers, if you feel like the story is solid, but you know there are issues with your grammar. There are typos you're not confident with using something like Grammarly, because, let's be honest, Grammarly only catches some of the things and then also suggests grammar things that are just wrong. Then maybe it would be a better use of your money, if you're in that case, to hire a copy editor, someone to clean up all of those things for you so that you present a manuscript that's polished. It doesn't look like it's a first draft. Yeah, so that's my two cents on on this whole thing. It's definitely not a requirement. There are things you can do to supplement and what I've what I've noticed some of my clients do. They don't hire me for their first book, second book, third book, etc, if they're an indie author, because they just don't have the funds to do it.

But then once they start to get a little bit of traction, once they start to make a little bit of money with their books, they invest that back in and hire an editor to help them. I've had a number of clients who I've done that for them. So it can always be something where maybe your first book, it's not possible, but maybe down the road, it's something that you want to explore. Yeah, okay, what are your thoughts? This one is a little bit longer, so just it's about a paragraph, so I'll read the full paragraph. What are your thoughts on authors using AI art to help advertise their books? I've seen arguments on both sides. One saying it's okay because not everyone has hundreds of dollars to spend and only get a few images.

Also, stock photos are heavily picked through, and using Pinterest photos violates the Pinterest policy. The other side saying it's not okay for authors to use a AI art, because it's replacing the art community, and it could be also seen as hypocritical, because writers don't want to be replaced with AI, so it should be the same mindset for artists. I look forward to hearing your thoughts. Okay, I am happy to give you my opinion on this, my personal opinion and professional opinion as an editor, not an artist, obviously, but just a book editor, if you had asked me this, like, I don't know, eight months ago, maybe I would have had a slightly more diplomatic answer, of like, well, I could see, like, I encourage you to not use AI, but like, I also understand, I think, because eight months ago, or, like, last year, maybe what?

Maybe when, like, chat GPT, first came out, which I know it's been longer than eight months, but there was this weird period where the writing community as a whole was like trying to grapple with how he felt about it, because I was looking at it through a lens of privilege and financial access. Like, if someone can't afford to do X, Y, Z with their book, and they can do it with chat GPT, like, maybe that's okay. And then for me, what happened is I spent a couple of months in this weird period where I wasn't sure how to feel about it, and then it's like I just shook all the fuzziness out of my head. Was like, wait a fucking second. What the fuck are we talking about here? We are talking about using a tool that has been trained off of stolen work from artists, from writers, from other creatives, and then using that to promote our books, design our books, sell our books, write our books, whatever.

No, absolutely no, I I'm just giving you my personal opinion. You are free to disagree with it. That's the wonderful thing about opinions. We can have different opinions. But I want to explain why I have this dance that I do and why I have this opinion. It's a no for me. I say, I say, if you can avoid AI at all, please, please, please, do it. There are two things that you mentioned. Well, one of the things that you mentioned in your question, I think is really important. It's not okay for authors to use a art because it's replacing the art community, and writers don't want to be replaced by AI, so it should be the same mindset. And I firmly 1,000% agree with that, if you are a writer and you do not want to see a future where AI written books are the only kinds of books that are being produced and published and read. If that is not a future that you want, which you shouldn't want, that we all shouldn't want, that, then we have to be careful. I feel like we're in this window right now where we have the power as a community to be able to decide what's okay and what's not okay. Because, you know, we both know that if publishers get the sense that it's acceptable, that readers will eat up and buy AI written books, that they will do that. So we have to decide as a community that we're not going to support.

AI written books we're not going to support that. We want to support human authors. And I feel like the same is true with art. I do not want to see a future where all art is automatically AI generated, computer, machine generated. I do not want to see that I understand the temptation, believe me, to use AI because it's free. But I think this is just one of those things that, like, you have to kind of accept as reality, like, unfortunately, that's just how it is that we don't always have the financial means to get the things that we want. I see this argument a lot, even before AI. I saw this argument all the time with authors, or, um, sorry, readers talking about pirated books, where they were like, I can't afford this book written by this author. I don't have all this money to be buying their hardcover books, so I'm just getting it off of a pirated website. It's a you're talking about privilege. Like, it's classist to say that we can't access but it's like, no, if you don't have the money to buy something, you can't just steal it. That's not the answer. And if you are a reader, if you are a lover of books, and you want to be a part of this community and you're looking to write a book, you can't steal from those very same people that you were hoping to be in community with. You can't do that.

So I don't know. Those are, those are my thoughts. I understand the frustration, and honestly, it might be a similar thing. I've seen social media comments from people who are in this exact boat where they don't have the money, and they've said similar things to my own experience working with clients who don't have the money right away to work with an editor, where they're like, Yeah, you know, my first covers were not great for my first book, first few books, whatever. And then once I got some traction, and once I got some money coming in as an indie author, I was able to go back and do new covers for my books. Like that can happen. So I just, I'm very clear on my own personal position with this because, number one, the fact that it's trained, AI is trained off of stolen work, those artists, those creatives, those writers did not give their permission to train, to have these tools trained on their work. It takes work away from real artists and creatives. And I do not want to see a future where we do not have a space for human created art. I think that's essential for culture, for society, for humanity. It sounds doomsday to talk in these general terms, but I think we're we got to talk about it that way.

It's just, yeah, that's what I believe. That's what I believe. Again, I have sympathy for people in that position. I've not been in a position where I couldn't afford art because I haven't indie published a book yet, or you know that that's just not part of the publishing path that I'm pursuing right now. But I have been in a space where I couldn't afford an editor, and so I understand, but that's just the reality of it. And I feel like there's a very clear distinction for me of what's okay in terms of AI and what's not okay, and this kind of generative AI thing, I do not want to supportnext question. This is also a bit longer, so I'll just read the full paragraph. I'm writing a novel.

Oh, this question, okay. This question is one that I got in an email form, and I kind of answered the question for the person, but I was like, let me add this to the podcast, because I think this might be helpful for other people as well. The person said, I'm writing a novel in a Word doc, and have about 187 pages. I know you mentioned that 75 to 90,000 words is roughly a full length novel, but I'm not really understanding how that will translate to page count with all, will all the chapter breaks and acknowledgements, etc, add up to the novel being 300 plus pages in the end, even though it word, it looks like less. I'm hoping to end up around 75 80,000 words. But will that only be in the 200 plus page range?

Okay, so basically, this person's wondering like, how does word count translate to pages? Because they're planning, they're trying to see, like, how many pages their manuscript will end up being. And that my answer to this person is like, I have no idea. I have no idea what, what? Because there's so many things that factor, factor into it when you're when you're converting a Word document or a Google Doc, Scribner, or whatever you write in to a finished book, whether that's an e book, printed book, whatever, there's so many things that go into it that it's impossible to say exactly how many pages it will end up being because of what this person mentioned, things like the acknowledgements, the chapter breaks. But there's also font type, font size, margins, headings, if you have illustrations or maps, like, there's so much stuff that goes into it that it's sort of a meaningless metric for a lot of people. That's why I have no idea, and I've never needed to know as an editor, as a writer, even myself, like I have no idea how many pages my my book would end up being, and I have no idea how many pages my clients books end up being.

And once they're all done and edited and polished and everything. So instead of aiming for pages, aim instead for word count, because that's the same, no matter what, word count is going to stay the same, no matter what font type, size, margins, etc, whereas page type does vary. And yeah, I've just not found it to be a meaningful metric, unless you have some specific reason that you have to know what the page count is going to be, then maybe you can do by like a formatting software or higher formatter to get it into a book format for you so you can see. But even then, I just, yeah, if you're still writing, if you're still working on the book, I just don't think it's a meaningful thing to really worry about at this point, I would aim more for for word count or or think more about your word count than your page count.

All right, our final question, what does it mean to die on submission? This is the second time I've heard that, but I don't get what that means. Also, did you have multiple offers when you got an agent or one? And if so, how did you decide? Thanks, I will answer the dial submission question first. That's a really good question. And actually, it reminds me I've been thinking about doing a Tiktok about that, because I say that phrase all the time so casually, and I don't really explain it. So the process when you get an agent, you query to get the agent right, and then as soon as you sign with the agent, you will probably go through some edits to your book. And then once the book is ready, it will go out on submission. So being on submission, when writers talk about that, that means that their book is has been submitted to editors at different publishers, and you're just kind of waiting to see, waiting for those editors to read that book, to see if they want to offer to acquire it, to buy that book, so that you get a book deal and your book gets published. So when a book dies on submission, what that means is that no one makes an offer to buy it. You just don't get a book deal for it.

This can mean it's not right away that it dies. Most agents will do at least a couple rounds of submission, so they might have a top tier list, like here are the 510, 15 editors that we're sending this manuscript to. First, because your agent knows these editors. They know people at different publishers. They know who's looking for what type of book, what your best chances of success are with these different people. So they'll send it out to those people first. Then if no one on that list is interested, you don't really get any traction. It's possible you might make a few changes to your manuscript at that point and then send it back out. But you might not. You might send it out to a second round of editors, and then if you don't get anywhere after a few rounds of that. I mean, every agent has their own process for this, so it's not a hard and fast rule about how many editors you send it to, or how many editors... how many rounds you do, how many editors you send it to, etc, um.

But if it gets several rounds in, you're not getting any traction. There's just no real response, or you're getting feedback that something about it is just not working.Then there gets to be a point where you're just like, Okay, I think this book is just not gonna sell. This is far more common than you would think. I did not know, before I went through this process and had this happen to me, to my book, I didn't know that this was a thing because people don't like to talk about it, which is a shame, because it's not it's not something to be ashamed of. It's not something to be like feel guilt about. It happens. It's like with querying. That's the first challenge. That's the first hurdle, is getting an agent. And then once you have an agent, there's another hurdle in the form of getting a book deal. I saw a stat recently from a literary agent, and I don't even remember what the numbers were, but it was like talking about how many, how many submissions that editor or they were an editor? Was she an editor or an agent?

I can't remember, but she was talking about the number of submissions on average that an editor at a publisher gets, and it's astronomical compared to the titles that they actually acquire. So there are far more agents sending out manuscripts hoping to get a book deal than there are editors that can acquire those books. So it's just a percentage thing. It's just not possible for all of those authors who are sending out their books to get book deals. So that's what it means to die on submission. This can usually be a period of months, maybe even a year, that this happens, because it takes time to get responses back from people. It happens. I've had this. I had this happen to me. My first book went on submission in October of2019 and right away we got interest from an editor on our first round of submission, and she was having us do something called a revise and resubmit, which is where she loved the book and she wanted to acquire it, but she took it to acquisitions, the the group that decides but basically, if you can offer to acquire a book or not, and they weren't quite on board with it, they wanted to see a few changes in the book first. So I was doing those changes and going to submit it back to her in the hopes that then she could get approval to buy it.

And then COVID hit, because this was all that we started the revise and resubmit in the winter, and then COVID hit in March, and publishing just kind of shut down. Not shut down. I mean, books were still being acquired, but it was like a very weird time in publishing that imprint and that editor, the editor got laid off, so that just kind of died. And then that was it. We sent it out to a smaller list a second round, and no one was interested, and then it just kind of died. And we could have submitted to a third round, but we just didn't. It kind of felt like it wasn't quite the book. Um, so yeah, that's, that's what it means to die on submission. Also, did you have multiple offers when you got an agent or one? Both times, I've only had one offer, my first agent, I had one offer, and then my second.

When I signed with my agent that I have currently, I did have another. I had an agent who kind of half offered. She's like, I'd love to talk to you. She said in an email, like, I love this, I would love to talk to you about representation, but I like, are you sold on the agent that you've, that you're either you got the offer from she kind of, like, didn't want to have the conversation if I had my heart set on my current agent, and I did, and I told her I was honest. I was like, Hey, thank you for the feedback. Like, to be honest, I'm pretty set on signing with her, so I guess it was, like, kind of a half offer, but not really.

So, yeah, I so I didn't have to make that decision about about it, but if you are in that position, like, really, what you have to do is talk, make sure that you talk to all those agents that are offering, got on the phone with them, get a feel for their style, how they handle things, what their suggestions are for your book, just to make sure that you're on the same page and do a gut check. Like, do you feel like you just have a would have a good working relationship with one over the others? Because your agent is your business partner in a lot of ways, so you want to make sure that you're on the same page and just would have a good relationship with them, a good working relationship? Yeah?

Um, I think that is everything that, yeah, those are all of our questions for this month, the whole dying on submission thing. I'm just thinking about this again, I'm so committed to transparency around my own publishing process because of being blindsided by it, when it happened to me again. I just like, didn't know that that was a thing that could happen. And I felt like a lot of I felt like I was a failure. I felt like, what's wrong with my book that it didn't get I didn't get a book deal for it. Like, yes, I had an agent, which was awesome. Like, that's incredibly hard to get an agent, but then my book didn't sell, and even my second book, so I wrote a thriller, the one that I signed with my second agent for.

We sent the book out. We only ever did one round of submission for that book, andit was a bigger list of editors, and we got feedback. This was the one that was about a podcast. The main character had a podcast, and we got a ton of feedback from editors that were like, Hey, we love the book, but like, we're there are just way too many books about podcasts on the market right now. So we can't, like, we just can't get this past acquisitions, because we're hearing from librarians, from booksellers, like, it's, there's just too many on the market. So then it was like, oh, okay, so that's why we didn't send it out to a second round. I did some edits. We had an editor who was interested, and I sent the revised version back to her, and she passed on it. And then no one else has seen the revised version. We kind of decided just to pivot to this new book.

There's still a lot of hope for that second book. That's why I don't say that that one died on submission, because I truly don't think it has. It hasn't even been out on a second round. It's just the timing. Some stuff going on with my agent. It just was a matter. There were things outside of my control, let's just say so I'm still hopeful that that one will find a home, because we did get good responses on that one. It's just the podcast thing was a no set, like, we just couldn't tell it that way. Yeah, okay. Like I said, if you have a question, feel free to submit it. And thank you for listening to the podcast or watching the YouTube video, and I'll see you next week.

Katie Wolf