 This is our second session of the city of written novels, Now What Channel. In fact, we have a masterminds of the channel right here, Bobby Nash, who I will introduce first. This is the award-winning author, Russ Novel, Connickville, short stories, graphic novels, and the occasional screenplay. He is a member of the International Association of Media Italian Writers and International Filler Writers. On occasion, Bobby appears in movies and TV shows, usually standing somewhere behind your beard actor, or more patient on Bobby in the work, please visit him at bobbynatch.com. We also have Louis Bles Johnson, who is a physicist, an author, and a principal investigator for the near and dear Ash Royce Galton Solar Sail mission. This is Solar Sail. It is, yeah. That's what we're talking about. Solar Sail mission at NASA's George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Pennsylvania. I'm having fun getting rid of this. I have to say all that. Bles' latest novel, Mission to Methany, was published in February 19th by Bang Books. He is also the author of multiple popular science novels, including the recently released graph... Graphene. I don't know why that word doesn't mean graphene. It's not an everyday book. It's a super strong super-gen and super-versus-offin-gen that will revolutionize the world. We have Katerina Asaro, who is the author of over 30 books. She earned her doctorate in theoretical chemical physics from Harvard. She currently directs the Chesapeake Math Program and has co-sponsored numerous math teams, including one for math competition at Harvard, MIT, Princeton, MathCount, as well as individual students in such events as the USA Mathematical Olympiad. Her latest novel is The Bronze Skies, and it will be published from May. And last but certainly not least, it has Edward Warren. Edward Warren is a reader, writer, and YouTube content creator who has worked in every facet of the publishing industry from editing to cover design to writing and criticism for the past 15 years. He's been writing professionally since 2011, and his most recent horror novel, The Bedding of Boys, is due out August 18th. And so, thank you all for participating, and I'm sure Bobby has kind of an idea of what things are safe. So, if you want to ask first questions with other authors here right now? Sure. Well, the genesis of this idea, we did it in a panel once, because they were just looking for ideas and we figured this out. And basically it was just who's here in the con. Okay, I know this person and this person, and then we just grabbed them. And I realized as we're talking, it's just a generic writing, just being a writer panel. And I got to noticing, to say, Meredith, we all were different types of writers. I'm almost traditional, I published myself Polish. You know, I'm kind of a hybrid, I'm in the middle. So, we kind of went in that direction of, because we get a lot of questions, and you guys probably didn't understand that question. I was like, okay, I don't know what to do with it once I've written it. How do you get published? There's just a lot of confusion, and there's a lot of options these days. So, this idea kind of comes out of letting you see the past that we all took. Or why we took that path is, you know, what had to, which would be the fact if we don't like the past we took. Things like that. So, with the knowledge of people who have written and published in different methods, can you give you guys more of a wider understanding of your publishing options? That was a gentleman's point. So, I guess the first question I would ask is, first tell them how you got published, where you took, whether it's traditional or self, or whatever, you know, and why you chose that path? You think it's starting in the end? Yeah, sure. I am almost 100% independently published. I do all of my own covers, my formatting. I do hire out for editing, because I don't trust myself with typos and such. But the reason I took the path up, I say almost 100% is because there is, I do have publishers that publish traditionally the hardcover of the novel, where there would be the limited edition, but then I will go and I will hit the e-book, the e-book, the audiobook, I retain the rights to those, and to the paperback. So, when I do the paperback release, it's all me. The reason I decided I worked in the publishing industry, like with my introduction for the past 15 years, you just don't make as much money. If you can reach the same amount of people, I'm not saying you're going to. I'm saying that if you have the outlet to reach the same amount of people as you would with a publisher, there is no reason in my mind to go with a publisher. You have access to the same type of editing, you have access to the same type of publicity. Now, there are perks to going to with a traditional press, and one of those big perks is that you can, you know, Walmart, Barnes & Noble, distribution is a huge thing that you cannot do. But, like I said, if you have the capability to reach those outlets by yourself, there's no reason not to. So, I did it. I've been successful, but I was telling him before we got started here, one of the main reasons why I've been successful is because of the audiobook industry. I don't make pennies on the dollar for my e-books and my paperbacks, but with my audiobooks, I make 40% of the net sale, and usually the audiobooks are anywhere from 25 to 70 dollars, depending on the length of it. With my e-books, I don't charge more than $3 to $5 for each one. I make 70% off that, but if anybody do the math, I obviously make more money off of the audiobooks. I'm able to reach the, be able to reach a professional writer status as an indie by doing it that way with the audiobooks. That's basically what pays the bills, and I support a family of four only on the independent publishing side. That's interesting. I'm almost the opposite of who you are. When I first came into the training of my works published, there wasn't this wonderful explosion of the avenue where you could do the stuff. It just wasn't done. If you did sell publishers, it was called Managed Press, and I'm very much like that now. Your only choice was to see if you did all the traditional publishers, and I did the whole thing, you know, sending out, getting rejection, trying again. It was a huge, we had this huge machinery in place for unpublished authors of letting each other know about the various venues, and my whole life. I was finishing my doctorate and getting a job as a professor, and everything in the back of my mind was always, you know, what kind of a pump could it pump? Everyone was right. But I was fortunate when I, I went to Intermediate at a job at Technical College. They were very smart. I got a lot of interviews because, you know, I'm considered, you know, a pretty good teacher, but also I was a woman in science, and I worked a lot for a lot of departments, looking for, you know, scientists. And then I had, you know, one of the best pieces of politics in the country, fashion in the world. So he helped me get a lot of interviews. And what caught me, you know, they also, we can offer you this, and we, you know, this money, and that salary. Ken and Paul were just smart. They said, we're going to have you talk to Joe Longus in the bio company. Oh, we saw the report. Ken, you've got me because of that. That's the reason I got me to write it. Because I really like Joe. We have a lot of comments. And sure enough, when I got those, we started, you know, with friends, we needed for lunch. One day she said, I understand you're sending out your book. And I looked at it. I have a board winning, I didn't want anything so fun. I'm not going to publish. But having a board winning, one of the top in the field, especially she's considered a scholar in the field of literature, is my favorite. So I said, okay. And she read it. She said, I want your book. She read the last topic. That's when I wrote it. It was about road work. And so we all said feminism and column work. So she said, I'm going to recommend you to my editor. And in those days, that was the only way in it. Somebody either opened the door or you cut in the slush. And it was like, you know, 2,000 people sent stories to animals that month. And it picked a date. Stanch met the editor and he met me at the same time with David Ardwell. He found me through Joan. I was nurturing him. But the tide, and I actually didn't get that many rejections compared to some people with the paper, the law, some others. You know, I got about 10. And then before people started sending out, he loved to write and send to something else. About the same time that David Ardwell said, I'm thinking I want to publish the book. I would like to write a short story about it. About that same time, Stan Schmidt said, well, not this one, but I kind of like what we did with it. And he fixed it and sent it back. And David wanted to see how I took editorial and what David was going to write. In the country. And that's why he wanted to write the short story. And I think the same was through this one. So I did what David wanted. I was very open to the editorial and they both published me about the same time. It was in 1991. At that time, there was no other way to distinguish it. You know, now, you know, we have these geniuses who figure out how to do it for themselves. At that time, there was no way or it was just being born. So there was no way either they just figured it out. And, you know, if you would spend hours going on this court, you know, this period would make 50%. You know, how much you need to produce the book, they need to print it. You most didn't need this. So, you know, by the time it got down to you, you know, you get 8% for everything. If you were back, you get 10% for a hard cut. And you could go through it, see where all the money went. It made sense. So, I've been, for most of my career, I've been traditionally published by Tor, which is part of the, the part of my big culture I've been working on. Vane, which is sign-to-sign-the-truth for distribution. They distributed all my books. I got paid a lot better than initially people got paid for self-publishing. And that started out better. You know, I was getting quite confused about how I was going to start. It actually, when I was reading the journal, there was an e-book publishing about it. What I was able to do for my first big book was keep the new publishing right. Because a culture didn't know that. And what he's doing is it makes a lot of sense. Keep as many rights as you can. My fourth book, it was from Tor, there's a big paragraph that I've been added in. It was clearly an added word, more than what it said. We own any electronic advice ever to be invented. It was like, we don't have the whole shebang that the ABN down was. I read to my agent, I said, no, no, no, they can't take it. They're trying to take everything. He said, well, I don't know you. I was going to do it, so they kind of take it wrong. I said, no, you get cast in it, so do it. You won't take it, they won't take it away. Because that's when they're starting to clear what is going to happen. Okay, since then, I've made more money on the three books that I've kept my own rights to do for e-book publishing. Then I've made combined with because the publishers came in and said, all right, you get 8% on your e-book, because you know, we'll get you 8%. This may all be nice, but maybe 10%. I'm like, no, no, no, no. You know, this book, it produces books. It costs money, especially if they bring me on hard charges that costs even more money. You have to distribute, you have to ship it. You have to over it. You have to give it to distributors who then give it to schools that take 50%. So okay, you know, you can show me 10%. You don't better do anything for the e-book. I said, I want 70% of the e-books. I was like, ha ha. Thanks for five minutes to turn it into a file. Yeah. Right. And you're like, I mean, 25% of this girl's family. I get 70%, you know, the e-books that publish yourself. For audiobooks, all my audiobooks sold to the big audiobook publishers. And then I had one, that they didn't want. It was an anthology from a small press called, it was an annoying transition from this thing because I was a guest of honor. And my agency didn't want it. And I said, well, go on then. Do you use ACF? Yes. Yeah, ACF. Yeah. If you want to do an audiobook, go to ACF. They do everything for you. You have to publish it. And if it's your first publication, you own the rights until you sign that contract. You can do what you want with it. So you publish it yourself. And then you go through the process and like he was describing, you could get someone to read it yourself. And then you get most of the royals. So I still get a lot more from my e-books. Really, really, really, really, the big publishers. I mean, they didn't care if they were on the fight for exams because then I was a bit, you know, I was. But just with that one book that almost no one's heard of, I do get a good amount from each month. I'm going to start doing the work. Now you have so many options for publishing that didn't exist when I started. I will, you know, one thing you couldn't say but you could probably get from what he was saying. You can do it yourself. You can do a lot of work. You can do well. You're willing to put in the work. I was going to mention when you were talking about how they do for you. I have to do all of that. The distribution, the mailing, all that stuff. Yeah, all the promotion, all that stuff is either out of my pocket or I have to do it myself. Physically, I have to show up in places. It's all, all behind the entire company. And if you're doing it yourself, you're not writing how you're doing it for them. Somehow, I managed to balance, to balance both. But, it was kind of fun. Kind of like an afternoon hobby for me and, you know, building everything up. Yeah, for me, it all started really with science fiction conventions. Because I, before I started writing, I would go to conventions and get talks about space and space exploration and science. And a lot of people would tell me at that time that I have the ability to explain complicated things so people can understand it. And I do that a lot. I talk management before. Sorry. So, I would do that. And I'd have people come up and say, you ought to write, you know, write this down. Maybe, I'm not sure whatever. And I hear it a lot over and over and over again. And finally, a good friend of mine, who had written some nonfiction, we had an idea for a nonfiction book called Living Off the Land in Space about how to use the resources of space to sustain exploration. And he said, less I've published with nonfiction the public of science before I'd like to write a book with. I thought, well, that sounds like a good idea. I always wanted to write a book. So we wrote a proposal and the publisher said, sure, this other color-breaking map off is the same. He had a track record with it. And he said, well, publish the book. So the book came out and as, actually before we finished as we were writing it, we sent them another proposal for another book. And they said, let us see how far you are on this first one. And they liked the second one. So I got another contract, right, before we finished the first one. So it was a very traditional route. But I left into it with the publisher. That publisher was Springer. And I've done a couple of books with him. And they're popular science now. They do a lot of science books. But they don't have much of a distribution network. It's very much a library distribution that has a very limited exposure of kind of book. And their popular science books do show up at Barnes & Noble and they can get loans on new book. But they're really, they don't pay much. And it's a very niche publisher. Well, about that same time, as I said, I go to science fiction conventions. I have a good friend in Travis Taylor who had been published by science fiction space adventure found this story. And he and I were in a discussion in a barbecue place constantly. Law and barbecue. And we were, you can tell by my voice, I'm not exactly a quiet shy or sort of kind of person who sits in the corner and you can't hear and he hears tracks. That makes me look shy. And so we were complaining about how my employer, by the way, I'm not the representative of NASA history things and all the record comment. I watch NASA TV as a snoozer. Right? Right. So most exciting adventure in the history of the species and the most dangerous thing we do is get on a rocket and go in the space. I mean, you've got engines that are training Olympic science swimming pools for, liquid hydrogen, 60 seconds of muscle oxygen, millions of pounds of plastic. And you've got people riding on top frames. Whatever. I mean, it's just amazing and what you hear on NASA TV is everything's knowledge. And so we were complaining about how, and then really it's the greatest adventure story since Jack London of, you know, human versus nature kind of thing has been spaced out to kill you to do it. Well, tell me why it's called. Who's the publisher? They named Travis the publisher. Yeah, she was in The Booth Next Door and she named Governe since it'd be a proposal for a fiction novel that's the next, you know, Jack London kind of thing only in space. And I might buy it. So, you know, we did that. My first science fiction novel, which is Back in the Moon and it's so well-known that we did see a book called Andy Astroia and I published four of them and it's my fourth novel. Travis and I have a contract for a series of three books that we're working on in the vein. And I've since left spring or thank goodness because they're a poor distribution network. And I was in the conventional route for my non-fiction book. We've got an agent. And I got many projection letters, but I landed an agent to find print literary management and she has been wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. She is responsible for this book happening on this material called Grant Mead and she actually came to me with the book idea that she had developed with Random House. This is from the used books. They said, we want a book on this topic and that's why we're here today. And so that's how I ended up getting a contract for this book which came out this year. And so for me, I've gone very much, I lucked into getting my novel published. I would freely do that. You could hit me with baseball bats later. I got luck, all right? But I've since signed with an agent and she doesn't work her way in gold and landed better contracts and new work that I never would have got. And it's, go ahead. I was just going to say one thing. So there's a book I recommend that if you want to go the traditional route, it's called Putting Your Passion Into Print. And it'll walk you through the process of how to appropriately go find an agent and get published so that you don't want to go to the self-published route and you want to go to the traditional route. You don't have to figure it all out on your own how to do it. This book is kind of aggressive. It's assuming you're a good writer but it's not necessarily what you want to be. But it's going to tell you what to do. How to write a query letter how to tailor it for the agent how to find the right agent for the kind of book you want to have been published. And I recommend that book very highly. How do you recommend it? That's how I got published. There was one out at the time written by the editors of Asimovs which was before the onset of the electronic magazine. There was only Asimovs, and a lot of fantasy and science fiction and for a while they sent it. Those were pretty much your only professional market. So the editors of Asimovs got together and wrote a book about it and everything to do with it. And then I would get various books like From Writers' Digest. So I wrote it quickly. The few times I wrote it, I wrote a whole bunch of books about it. Like Stan Schmidt, I sent him something which later became the Lord's book. And I sent it to him and he said, well I like a lot about this but it's not quite right. Send me something else. So I sent him Light and Shack and forgot to say, if an editor ever says to you, this is not quite right for me. Send me something else. That's a big deal. You don't get that on the state general or anything like that. Well I didn't. My thing, you asked me to send you. And at that time they had slush readers. There's still even the e-magazines that have slush readers. And so once a slush reader, he decided, my next one, I never made it. So I was pissed off. He asked me to send him more. So I wrote a letter. I sent it back. I wrote this letter saying, well you asked me to send you. And here's why you're going to like this. And I explained all this stuff and that, you know, I came up with a really clever idea of circumventing the problems that feel like I'm a physicist. This is my idea. You should rule this. And you asked me to send it to you, right? There are more points than that, but that broke every rule. Because I'm not supposed to do that. They don't want to see long letters. The classic thing is, you know, the letters go on my mother's side. Here's a scenario. They're a writer. The cover letter is longer. It's the start. And that's an automatic rejection. Well I was the New Yorker. His large extension was actually interested specifically in the thing I was writing about. And he himself had written a book about being a real physicist in the speed of light. So he wrote me back and said, okay, I'll take your challenge. This story, as it is, I wouldn't accept it. But if you do this, this, this, this, you may send it back. And now it became like my first story. There's something to be said also. It's been brought up twice so far. There's a special word here. Love. There's a lot of love in this business period. Finding a readership, finding a publisher. There's a lot of love. So on top of being talented, and having the everything that you need. Granted, the education, the stuff, what comes into play, a lot of this also. So you can write the best book in the world, but nobody looks at it. If you're not looking up and get it to somebody or looking up to find a good agent to get it in with somebody, then you're still, you know, somebody. You're not just lucky. You work. I'm saying it's the... Well, let me finish. I was using you. We make our luck. You know, it's true that I didn't get a lot of rejection, but that wasn't luck. That was because I spent hours and hours, days, planning. You know, I accepted a job offer based not on that. It was the best university that offered me a job. But because it had John Tomlowski who was published before. I mean, everything, you know, I made my luck. And I did research and I found that I was going to publish it with books. I learned... I went and read a book after a book about what are they looking for. So, yeah, I didn't get a lot of rejection. I'm not discounting, you know, the talent of a hardware putting in until a lot of it. Getting it in front of the right person. And you'd be super telling you can put in all the work. I know that there's guys in the business that have finally went to self-publishing because I'm getting good books, but they will read them. They're just not getting to the right people. They're not getting past, like you said, the slush acquisition address or the slush policy. But they still have the things that they still haven't been able to go on. Even doing self-publishing. Well, I've been lucky. I've been lucky. I've been lucky. I've been lucky with audio books. I've been lucky. A lot of luck comes into play in everyday life. Is it on or is it down? I don't know. I want to hear from Dr. Comet Grider first. That was my first professional comic writer. And when you decide to move from comments to prose doesn't matter how good a comic writer you are it doesn't count. They're completely different types. So yes, I had good selling comments in publishers of novels for like we didn't care. So I started out in comics, when I wrote my first novel, I was also back when you self-published it was Fandy and it was very much looked down on. There was only a few publishers or an agent, which I attempted to do. I sold my first novel in 2004. I've been querying agents since 2000 when I wrote it, and yet to find one. I have been published over a hundred times, from publishers that are small press, to a few I've done myself, to big New York publishing houses. But yeah, I still cannot find an agent that I work with. I have actually had agents tell me, even looking at all the stuff that is published, that my work's not selling. Oh, it's sold. Yeah, it's one of those very nice things. So I wrote my first novel, and I found a publisher. It took me six years of querying publishers to find one. It turned out to be an awful, awful experience. But I had a book. I had a book in my hand, and I used that book to talk to other publishers. Because they don't know about the behind the scenes crap that was going on. But I had a book, and when you talk to people, you're going to be new editors, new publishers. Say, hi, I'm a writer, and they go, oh, what have you written? I'm working on my first, and you can't see the glaze, you know. But if you go up and say, hi, I'm a writer, oh, what have you written? And you go, oh, here, you put a book in their hand. First thing they're going to do is they're going to put that over their back. You've bought yourself a minute. And if that's enough to enter, you can at least, you know, bought yourself a minute or two to make your picture. But having the first book, I was doing a convention. I had, because I was doing a convention because I had the conference. So I have all my comments out, and I had my novel out. I'm so excited about my new novel. It came out like a week before the convention. It was really cool. I'm so excited. So next to me, this is where the luck thing comes in. So next to me was a writer who was starting his own imprint at a publisher doing pulp. But we're doing a pulp revital or old pulp here. And he went home. He bought a copy of my novel. Two weeks later, I get an email. Hey, I read your book, liked it. You would be perfect for this, or you would be interested. And after I hadn't even explained to me what pulp writing was, I started doing that. So that led to, even though it was a crappy, crappy experience for me on the personal level, it led to the next book, which then led to other books, which led to other publishers. And so to even though I started out with this very small press thing, eventually you do get to know that this is a bigger publisher or something that will come higher than you or come to you, the coolest thing about a publisher that you've never worked for or can call you up, you know, hey, we saw you did this and we wanted it. How would you like to pitch us something? Or do you have something for us that you can pitch to us? And so in that invite, you know, it's a big deal. You know, like you said, when they asked me to reset something else, any time a publisher comes to you and asks for anything without you prodding them or banging them or bragging them or whatever, you know, it's a big deal. Yeah, it's a big deal. And so I took the small press route and used that, even though there wasn't a lot of money in doing those anthologies, I kind of started out doing those anthologies for a couple of years. It built up my resume. You saw me at Conn's, I had a table full of books, you know, it was kind of that perception, it was busy, you know, you had a table full of books. And that also allows you to play in different genres, which sometimes helps you later down the road if the publisher says, and you write crime fiction, yes, I can. So yeah, I've done it here. So using that kind of led me to use that as a front of the steps, believe me to where I am now. And then, you know, I'm still agent-hunt from time to time. It's still very demoralizing. I do it as long as I'm fed up and I say, it's rural and I'll try to get next year. But I get enough work without the agent and it's not to be a deal for me as it used to be. I would probably make more money if I had an agent, probably a bigger publisher. But that's the frustration in that. And in recent years, I have started adding self-publishing to my list. This particular book here, I self-published. I started doing, I sold, originally the first one, it was originally sold to a publisher. It was just one of the e-books. They didn't want the print rights. They sold me the print rights. They let me keep print rights, audio rights, everything. They put out the first e-book, and then three years passed and it began. So I finally got an article on it. Once it got printed out. So I started just doing it on myself because of the size. Instead of reforming and re-figuring it, I had planned and already written some of them. So I started doing them myself as, this is a collection of print. So they're smaller. And I can release a couple throughout the year. So I started self-publishing. I, excuse me, started going through my back list of stuff I've written 10 years ago in an anthology. And hanging on, I've got three, I've got three sci-fi stories. I collect those three sci-fi stories in one book and self-publish that and keep my back list going. So I guess I call them that hybrid because they still work full publishers and then do my stuff and kind of like juggle it and then slide it. Do you have any questions? Yeah. I'll handle that. I'd like to know how y'all promote your book. Any way you can. That's hard. Yeah. I use specifically book books. You put your book on sale for $0.99 or $1.99 or whatever it is. They're rather difficult nowadays to get into. You have to build a following first which is kind of backwards because you're trying to get a following. You're trying to sell your book, but now you have to have a certain amount of followers before they even let you run an ad. I will do that. I also have a YouTube channel where I promote my stuff on there, but that's pretty much it. I run sales through Bookbub. Bookbub's huge. That's why they're harder to get into now. And social media. I mean, that's really it. And of course I talk about it every time. Any time I can. That's my promotion. Traveling to conventions, joining writing groups, asking a local library that they'd like you to come in and talk about. I have a two-face cook page and one which is a public-figured page which my fans started and then gave me. And I have a personal page which isn't really a personal page because it's all my fans before I had the public-figured page. And so I hit the limit for that 5,000 people's story. So then we started, but it started spilling all over the public-figured page which has none. You can post whatever you want if you want to reach more people. You can boost the public-figure. You know, it's a pretty paper to add, but that's pretty low. 40, 50 bucks to boost the public-figure. It's thousands of people in there and they're happy. You can pick your audience, argue with people that would like what we write. So you can say, people who put up the tag, science fiction, space entertainment, that sort of thing. You can know, there's lots of special media sites. Facebook, Twitter is short and a little short. You should be on the board to do something. There's still a couple of senses worth of stuff on the photograph. You know, you can talk about your book. You learn how to interact with fans, Instagrams and other ones. We're not constantly promoting, but when we're talking to people and we're telling, you know, posting pictures of a cat, you know, whatever. People get to know you and so they join and we build up, you know, thousands, you can potentially get thousands, tens of thousands. And the letterings have millions of followers. So when they put up a post, I was both coming out. I'm not mad, I'm tensed up. But it's still, LinkedIn's another one you can make people more professional if you're writing with popular science or more less heroic science. Because I have mainstream, you know, big-flight publishers, they will help me organize tours. I'm still after them. They'll pay for all of them. I still often have to pay for travel or the convention I'm going to, you know, they'll pay for it. Like, they pay for reading and that's it. You know, but if you can make a, combine things together and books coming out, you can generally do a portable promotion of those books. And just to meet people, you know, I have friends that I started at an international convention that who know them for years. It's a community that we can improve at. Science fiction is a community where there are fans of women and many others. The name gets on the community then and it suffers. It's not just promotion, it's being part of something else a lot. The word of mouth is very valuable. And it's still one of the best promoting tools you'll ever add. You can please one person and make yourself something else. And that's, that's really the best. Because people, like I'm going to care about an ad, I just read the book, but it's amazing. The word of mouth is still very important. And what you're talking about doing is just meeting people. How many times has your perception of someone's work changed because you met them and they were so nice that now you enjoy their work more? And the opposite works, too. I've met that couple before and I love them, and I can't not think about that whenever I read their work. It goes a direct correlation for me when I go to the convention. If I'm only on panels, if I do one of my solar talks about space exploration or whatever, I sell it. And so I really try when I go to the cons to try to do solar talks because that's when I get the cons which if you recall is why people started asking you to write a book. So it shouldn't be surprising. And you're entertaining. I mean, you're entertaining. A physicist who's entertaining? No, you don't even know when they were talking about it. I have to tell you, though, this publisher was awesome. We were reviewed in the journal Nature. They sent it out to Nature. My professional worked on it. I'm leading a mission to an asteroid with a solar sail. It's not a calendar. They reviewed this book. I've got a part of Nature. An excerpt was published in American Scientist, which is awesome. This book's being promoted by the Gratvian Material Society of America. In fact, the book comes out to get the spike in sales at the beginning. Sorry, friends are landed. And then the sales kind of drew a lot. Well, as soon as this went in Nature, there was a spike. American Scientist, there was a bigger spike. And then there was, I forgot a podcast. Well, some podcasts had a thing on Gratvian. And there was a little short interview with my co-author of this book. And he had a spike higher than the release one. And so it's just interesting. I'm excited to tell you the correlation, right? To look at the correlation between what gets a little bit of press and the public in sales. The important thing there, too, is that the difference between publishing then and publishing now. Publishing is going to be over a hundred years ago. When they ran out of, I don't know how many they printed, they printed 100,000. 100,000 were gone. Your book was gone. Unless it was at a huge bookstore. Now, your 100,000 sales, they can make it print on demand. So if anybody else wants it, that book will be available 100 years from now. I like the sound of 100,000. This sounds good. And I do. Yeah, they used to have 100,000 printed. Now, you don't get this. Because so many keep providing e-books. But the bad part, it's nice that they stay in print. The bad thing is, used to be your book could go out of print after three or four years. Often I would get something to publish where they say, well, we've got 800 books left in the warehouse. It's going out of print. And then the book would be mine. I could do whatever I want. And if they did go out of print, there would usually be a clause in your contract that said, once it stops selling, let's say it's done. If they don't pay you again to reprint the book and bring it out again, they have to give it back. That's a standard rule of law. Now they are competitive and they don't have to pay you to reprint the book. Now they are perpetually in print. And this happened with this one book that's selling like two trade paper bags a year at Bantamville Bay. And he said, why are your books still in print? That's where you're doing your research and your book research. You're going to have to know that. It's just the nature of the business. Right, because it's kind of the nature of the business now. Yeah, there's a lot of people. People are perpetually in print. So the tour will not give me that. But even print books, now I've not worked with tour or bank, but I won't conflict with publishers that even when their initial print run or whatever it was is done, they will make the book available print on the man. So if someone wants a print copy, they'll have to write something every single day. I will say, there's still a lot of news then, but I don't get a lot of royalty. And I want to read, write. You know, the nice thing about e-books, you can rewrite if you better write it. I can't do that because tour has got all the rights. I will say, I don't do that as much as I probably should. I feel like a jerk if I'm going to put something out there that I'm not updating. All those people who buy it to begin with don't get the better material, so if I'm going to rewrite, I wouldn't un-publish that when it completely re-write it. There are second editions. It's a couple of books on the second edition where you have new material, and that gives you the opportunity to rewrite it. But it's clearly like in the second edition. I did that with the birth book, so I won't experience one of my things. And I self-published it myself. I made a few tweaks and whatnot. It was horrible for a lot of reasons. They didn't know what to do in normal cases. They were very unprofessional just to be honest. There's a reason why. So it was just a horrible experience. I had to pay. Yeah. I made lemonade out of the lemon. I had a book. And I took the fact that I had a book that I wrote that I was proud of and I used that to get other publishers interested. And really that's the only good thing that came out of my deal with that publisher. But I had a book that I was happy with. I had a book that's been between birds and then me putting in print afterwards. It's been in print since 2005. I still sell new copies here and there. I bring them to shows. So, but you guys were talking about I had a promotion and whatnot. I still promote this book that came out in 2005. I've been new fans for new things I've done. Hey, I still got this book. Sales will spike ever once in a while. You know, sales spike after cons. You guys probably see that too. You know, you meet people with cons and like I don't have the money for it. You're so hard. You know, next week, you know, they get paid. I wanted that book to make an Amazon. Yeah, that's a good point. You get spikes like that now from social media. You'll get out of the list someone from Italy will say, can I do an interview with you? I need to find you to be right. And then they'll do this big thing. Or they'll interview you on YouTube. And podcast. Or the nice thing about Darwin's big publishers, they get reviews in places like publishers weekly. Which is nice. Yes, the big trade mechanism. But reviews are important no matter who they come from. And so this is our big plea if you guys read books that like them review them. It was all based on their algorithm for how they can get the book based on the number we have. And reviews are not that's what I'm thinking here. Writing reviews is hard. No, it's not. Do you like the book? I like this book. That's a great book. I like this book. That's a great book. I want to add something to the spike in sales that you guys have talked about. One of the best parts for me with the independent side of things is I know exactly when something is seeing a spike. So if I want to continue that spike and I want to try and push it I can go buy an ad somewhere or I can do another rush. But just before that book with publisher you may not get the news that it's selling well right then you're going to miss that bubble of that. They don't want you in that. Exactly. But it comes time to negotiate for a new book. All of a sudden you're there worst on the book. It's harder with the Amazon because you can see what they're doing. And there's a self-feeding monster there. Because as your sales rank drops which is a good button for sales rank closer to one. They promote you more. And you get more places they place you. So there's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy there. And so you want that moment. Because if you raise that sales that book stands sales. You get 25 reviews. They put you in this thing where they start comparing you. Where it's like if you like this you'll like this. See buddy I've heard this. I've heard the magical number 25 to 15 to 100. But I have a book that has 14 reviews. It outsells everything I have and it pops up in newsletters. I honestly believe that Amazon cares more about the sale of what's selling as opposed to the reviews. Sure, sure. But if you get the reviews because the one that happens I have 104 reviews on it. And I know this is probably the small number for you guys. 104 reviews on it. And one that's like 54 reviews on it. That 14 review one outselling both of them is popping up all over the place. So I've never actually seen the proof of the number of reviews but reviews do help. I can only say that Amazon told me that's one of that. I have to believe that they're not aligned. See it depends if you're a new writer it depends on the phones you have. I don't look at it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I went down two places. I stopped the sales page. I get my bank account. and paid the well. See if I was going to do that I don't think that would work for me. I think I'd get like all... I did not look at the sales rank but I'd be all 3 pairs. I don't know, I'd be all 3 pairs. It seems like a lot of unity. Long generality in terms of your endurance and the stubbornness. And just also getting out and talking to people so I hope that this has been an interesting accomplishment and we are Obviously, I mean, we can talk about that for an hour. I know we didn't get to all the questions, but I think we all have to take all the truth. Yes, okay. Go for it. Come on here. Look at our stuff and ask questions. Look at our stuff. Fire stuff. Fire stuff is there. Fire stuff is there. Fire stuff is there. Fire stuff is there. Fire stuff is there.