Story Magic

98 - Hybrid publishing with Evette Davis

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Today, Emily & Rachel talk about hybrid publishing with guest Evette Davis.

What you’ll learn from this episode: 

  • what is hybrid publishing (vs indie or trad publishing)
  • what it's like to query/submit to a hybrid publisher
  • expectations for hybrid publishing
  • what it's like to republish a series with a hybrid publisher

Check out Evette's books: https://evettedavis.com/

Read The Council Trilogy now: https://evettedavis.com/#books


Ready to make readers so in love with your characters they can’t stop biting their nails in anticipation?  Grab The Magic of Character Arcs free email course: https://www.goldenmayediting.com/arcsmagic

Join Tenacious Writing! With the perfect combo of craft, mindset, and community resources, you will build a writing life that feels sustainable, fulfilling, and fun—without any prescriptions or rules. Learn more: https://www.tenaciouswriting.com/

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Rachel: https://www.instagram.com/bookcoachrachel/

Emily: https://www.instagram.com/ebgoldenbooks/

Emily:

Hey, writers, welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.

Rachel:

I'm Rachel.

Emily:

And I'm Emily.

Rachel:

And today we are talking about hybrid publishers, hybrid publishing journey, all things publishing through hybrid with very special guest episode, Yvette Davis. Yvette, welcome.

Emily:

Hello. Welcome.

Rachel:

We are so excited to have you on the podcast today. Before we dive into our topic, could you tell us a little bit about you and the books that you write and how you got into writing in general? Let's just talk about you.

Evette Davis:

Sure, that's great. Thank you for asking. So I have been writing, let's see, science fiction, urban fantasy, dystopian novels for about a decade and I'm based in San Francisco. I have a day job as a co owner of a very successful public relations firm in San Francisco that does political consulting, crisis communication. So not surprisingly, my writing and my day job somewhat intersect. Except for the part where there are witches and vampires.

Rachel:

That's the best part.

Evette Davis:

Yeah, exactly. Awesome.

Rachel:

So you've been writing for like 10 years now. Um, and these books that are coming out now, you're publishing them through our hybrid publisher. That's why we're talking about this today. What was that journey like writing? Did you already have them written before you went down this journey? Was that the intention, the goal?

Evette Davis:

Sure, that's a great question. So I created my own publishing imprint called Flesh and Bone Publishing, and I actually published three novels through that imprint. These two, two of the books in this trilogy and another standalone novel called 48 States, which was a Kirkus starred review novel a couple years ago about a maniacal CEO who tries to overthrow the government. But I knew Brooke Warner, the founder of she writes and Spark Press. I had met her many times through our various work together. I'm on the board of Litquake, San Francisco's literary festival. And I had, I just. It's a. It's really backbreaking to be totally a self published writer. It's a lot of work when you do it well, you have to engage with a lot of editors and proofreaders and it's expensive. And I wanted to try hybrid publishing. And I had been watching Spark Press and she writes press. And I was impressed with what Brooke was doing and so I approached her and asked her if she would consider taking the trilogy and republishing the first two books and then taking the third one. And she agreed. I was very fortunate. A lot of people think that hybrid publishing is like vanity press where they'll just take Anything. But in fact, they review it and you have to, you know, pass their standards. So I like that that was a little shot in the arm. But the books also needed to be brought into a kind of state of modernity. And I'll just give you an example. Like in the original versions, people read newspapers. There was no streaming, you know, like Spotify hadn't come on board. And so going back and reading them, you're like, wow, a lot has changed in just a very short amount of time. And there are all sorts of issues about agency and the post me too movement and just being sensitive to things that weren't as noticeable. And so it was a really fun experience to bring them up to scratch. And then of course, they went through a rebranding and new covers and new artwork. And the benefit of hybrid publishing is that you are self published in the sense that you're paying for it, but you're getting all of the professionalism that you need. The editors, the book designers, and also Simon and Schuster is our distributor. And for me, that was the single biggest game changer was having a really, you know, obviously a big name and a professional name in publishing, but it also, it really changes your obligations as a writer. You have a lot of work in terms of getting prepared and filling out all the different tip sheets and cover memos and things that they need to be able to sell these books, you know, across the United States. So it's. It was a. It was a great decision, but it also really ups your game considerably.

Rachel:

Yeah. So go ahead, Emma.

Emily:

Yeah, I was just curious. So you. You did the indie thing. You got like a really good. It sounds like a really good experience doing that. And then you decided you wanted to try a different publishing path. And I'm just so curious because there's. Right. There's so many different publishing paths. And we've done a couple episodes for folks on the differences between them. But I'm just curious, like, what was your decision process for choosing Hybrid? Like, what were you. What were the kind of the pros and the cons? Like, why that publishing route for you? And the reason I'm asking is because I think we talk a lot about how these are business decisions, right? They're personal decisions about the business that you want to run. And there's no right or wrong decision. There's just kind of the pros and cons of what you want your publishing journey to be like. So I'd love for. To get your experience personally and also for our readers to understand kind of what were the steps that led you to choose that path.

Evette Davis:

Right. Well, so if you're doing this sort of on your own, right, you're self publishing, you have to make a series of decisions. What is your book cover? How are you publishing? Who's proofreading it? Is it being line edited? You have to upload it, it has to be uploaded to different platforms, and then you have to decide on the price and you have to decide on the metadata. And it's a lot of work. And, you know, depending on what your goals are, if you're, you know, I, I'm not, I have realistic goals for myself in terms of a writer, but I do want to build a brand and I do want to build an audience. And having done it on my own, you know, I still had to hire. I hired, I have a, I have my own personal developmental editor that edits all of my manuscripts. And then I needed line editors and I needed proof editors. I, I have my own PR firm that I don't do my own pr. I have a publicist. And at some point it was just a lot of work. It's backbreaking. And I, I thought that hybrid publishing or offered an opportunity to maybe streamline a lot of those internal processes and keep them professional, but also put them in a place where I just had to say yes or no. I mean, I still have to review my manuscript, but the manuscript goes to an editor and then it comes back to me. So, like, I have, you know, I, I still get advanced reader copies and I have arcs that I have to review, but I didn't have to do all of that and I didn't have to upload it to IngramSpark and make sure that it uploads and I didn't have to choose the font. You know, it's like when the book comes back laid out like a book designer did it, and they know what they're doing and they know about what should be on the COVID And I don't have to guess if, like, my image is going to be okay. And so it was a business decision to save time and avoid mistakes that could be avoided by using a group of people who know what they're doing and they have an incredibly good track record of selling books. But, you know, when you join a hybrid, at least when you join Spark Press, she writes press, you get a writer's handbook. It has a bunch of things you need to know. And you still have to basically make a commitment, say, for example, to do public relations, which I think the most common complaint that I get from writers is like, well, why do I have to hire a PR person? And they're so expensive, and it's very expensive. And as somebody who charges for pr, I'm like, yeah, I know it's expensive, but you have to think about without making everybody cry, who's a writer, how many books are released every day, every month? I mean, in order to have any chance of anybody knowing who you are, unless you're staying up all night and doing social media when you should be sleeping, you've got to have somebody helping you with your publicity. So it was a business decision. And, you know, you can go back even further, say, why didn't I go to just a traditional agent and, like, query these books? I did, but I got a lot of feedback that these books were, like, too political and, you know, or they weren't mainstream enough. And I'm not. At least in the moment, I'm not in the mood to write what will sell to an agent. I'm in the mood to write what I'm interested in writing. And so that was my first business decision, was not to go courting them. And even with 48 states, I sent that book out to dozens and dozens of agents. Many took the book and kept it for six months. And they're like, oh, it's so hard to understand how to sell this book. It's so political. Right. Really? Like, I feel like, yeah, but in any case, this, to me, was a compelling middle ground. And then if you ask me for, like, what I'm going to do next, I don't know if I'm going to publish a paper book for the next books that I write. I feel like maybe I'm going to spend, like, I have an interest in writing a romance series. And I'm thinking maybe there are ebooks on Kindle, you know, unlimited or whatever. And I don't go into the paper version or I do a. I don't know, because I have a substack column and I. I'm. I'm doing a serial Fiction of 48 states on Substack, and I'm like, maybe I just want to really do a great serial fiction for a while. And that is one of the nice things about where we are today as writers is you have a lot of choices. Yes. And then maybe I'm going to write some magnum opus, and I'm going to query agents and just pray that somebody takes my book. Right. But it's hard. It's extremely competitive landscape.

Rachel:

Yeah, I love.

Evette Davis:

Go ahead.

Rachel:

I was just going to say I love this, I love bringing it back to like, choice because we talk a lot about this on the podcast where Emily's traditional publish and I'm self published. So I love hearing this third option of like, there's aspects of both parts of this and what is going to be most comfortable for this for the writer. And it boils down to choice and options. We have a lot of options now that we didn't used to have. And I, I, I think that's so important because at the same time, hearing you say, like, I'm really committed to what these books say, you know, like, I don't want to, I want to write the message that I want to write. I mean, we're always talking about how important it is that you make choices for yourself. And there are options to help you get your book out there into the world in the vision that you want it to be. And you don't have to feel like, I can only go this one route or I, or I'm locking into this choice for my whole career. It's like, it's, we laugh because we started to say, like, it's so unserious of like, it's just not that you can always change your mind. You can always go a different direction. There will be options. I think that's really powerful. And it sounds like now you feel really empowered by those choices where like 10 years, when you, 10 years ago, when you started, it wasn't necessarily the same.

Evette Davis:

Yes. And. Well, and I just, I have two things. One, Emily, I've been with traditionally published authors in like book festivals, and I've heard them complain that they got no PR budget, no marketing. So I mean, I feel like being a traditionally published author, while it has, it certainly feels good to be chosen out of that pile and to have a publisher that wants to support you, but you still face a lot of the same things that other writers do unless you're at the very top of the list. And so I feel like that's why you see established writers, like, you know, some stay with their publisher, some do some on their own, some, you know, it varies. And I think that is a great freedom. Just the same as if I wanted to write a murder mystery, I should be able to write a murder mystery and not only have to write science fiction, but I, there was a lot of prejudice and kind of snobbiness with being a self published writer. I actually was at a dinner party recently where a traditionally published writer said, you're the smartest self published writer I've ever Met.

Rachel:

Oh, my goodness. Backhanded compliment.

Evette Davis:

Yeah. Thanks so much, I think. But so, you know, there's really. And that's just. I think. I don't think she meant it as bad as it came out, but, you know, she didn't.

Emily:

But, yeah, we're like. It's ingrained in us. Right. And I think that's so. I feel like half of our time on this podcast is spent trying to un. Ingrain that from. Disentangle that from people's brains because it's so toxically pervasive.

Evette Davis:

Yeah, I think so. And I think anybody. I try to tell people if you wrote a book, you did more than somebody who said they were going to write a book. There's lots of people like, yeah, I'm working on a novel. You're like, it's been 10 years. Let's wrap it up. You know, if you put. If you put the commitment in and you did something, I don't care how you did it. It's important to be a creator is to sacrifice a lot that other people don't in the service of making something. And making something is important. And when you do it, you should feel good about yourself, regardless of the platform that you ultimately use to, you know, give it to the world.

Rachel:

Yeah, absolutely.

Emily:

Can we talk about marketing for a second, since we're kind of on the topic? Did I hear you right when you said. Did you say that your hybrid publisher helps you with PR or that you hired somebody else to do your pr? Okay, can you talk a little bit about that? What does marketing look like in your. Like, in the, hi, hybrid world? From your experience, obviously, knowing that hybrids vary a lot, but.

Evette Davis:

So for she Writes and Spark Press, we received a writer's handbook, and it had in it, I would say, like a half a dozen, maybe seven different public relations firms that they trusted and knew and they encouraged you to use them, among others. And I had already gone through different PR firms, so I basically interviewed with two firms I had used before and I. And two firms that were on the list and came ultimately to use a PR firm called Books Forward. And I've had a. You know, I have my own resources, so I'm in a fortunate place. But I have, you know, a full retainer kind of program with them for the three books. Although I can talk a little bit about what it's like to have a second book in a trilogy and how much less attention you get for it versus the first. So it's been everything from traditional media pitching, pitching, to podcasts and journalists to a pretty aggressive social media program. And I have some strategic digital ad buying. They've helped enter the book in awards. They've helped make sure that it has all of the strategic industry reviews. And I've even had them consult a little on my website and making sure that I've updated my website and then really maximizing the reader experience. So some people, you know, and I, and I signed on for a year knowing that I was going to do this very intense roller coaster and not wanting to stop and start, you know, my process. Some people only have a, you know, somebody for the launch, which is, what, three months before your publication date, and then they just drop off into the nothingness, which, look, it's what you can afford and what you can do, but it's daunting, right? I mean, I look at my Amazon Goodreads things and it's like, I have more on Goodreads than I do on Amazon because nobody likes Amazon. And yet Amazon is a. Is where most people purchase their books. So it's like having 124 reviews on Goodreads is great, but it doesn't sell books the way that having hundred on Amazon would. And so I'm constantly trying to figure out what the alchemy is of streak team and doing stuff. And quite frankly, it's one of the reasons why I think being a writer today is so frustrating is because it's. You're spending half your time just trying to get people to say nice things about you online so somebody will buy your book. And then I'm running into bookstores and, like, signing books and trying to be nice to them. But I know, like, fewer, very few people will buy my book in a bookstore versus buying it online or being in a library, you know?

Rachel:

Yeah. So how. How involved are you in their strategic planning and, like, in the execution? Do they kind of handle everything for you or are you, you know, speaking of those, like, reviews? It's obvious you're conscious of it. So are you working with them to be like, here are strategies we can use to accomplish our goals, or are they just kind of like, you know, updating you as. As they work?

Evette Davis:

I would say maybe because of my background in public relations, we worked together at the beginning and kind of had an overarching game plan. And then they send me weekly updates and I have, like, a spreadsheet where I can track things. I do not read all the reviews in my book because you know, what would happen.

Rachel:

Oh, yes.

Emily:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Oh, we talk. Oh, absolutely.

Evette Davis:

You know, my favorite. My favorite is the one. It's like I stayed up all night reading the book, but I just thought the characters were not that believable. I was like, what? Okay, I just talk to you anymore. Oh my God. Thank you. I love that. Gosh.

Emily:

Okay, can question. So you are in public relations and yet you hired someone in public to do your public relations. Can you tell me about that? Cause I think oftentimes people are like, oh, well, you're an expert. Like, you're an editor. You don't need an editor. You know, you're. You're in PA pr, but you still need a PR person. So, like, tell me about that.

Evette Davis:

Right. So. Well, one, the kind of public relations I do is crisis communication and reputation management and government affairs. So I'm not as good at marketing, although I do do that. But I think it's. To me it's a little bit like, you know, don't. You shouldn't be a lawyer for yourself. You know, I mean, I think you have to have some kind of separation. And also you need somebody to be honest with you about what works and what doesn't and what's okay to say and what's not okay to say. And I think it'd be very difficult as a writer for me to market myself. It's really the worst. I mean, I was telling somebody, it's so anticlimactic when you finish your books. Right. Because what's the funnest part? Writing them in there with the people. I like my characters. I want to stay with them. And then you get done and then you have to go sell your book to people. For me, at least it's, believe it or not, as effusive and friendly as I am, it's hard to want to sell yourself. Um, yeah. So I never considered it. Although I have occasionally gone to certain reporters, like I've seen a certain story and I've sent a reporter note saying, like, hey, guess what? Like, I wrote a book about this. I'm going to shamelessly like, promote it to you. And you know, but I wouldn't want to have to have that as a full time job.

Emily:

Yeah.

Evette Davis:

So, you know, but I do advocate for myself when I need to.

Rachel:

Good. I hope every author learns how to do that.

Emily:

Yeah.

Rachel:

And it's hard. It's really hard. It's hard to want to promote yourself. It's hard to know how also. So I, I think that's awesome that, that even your publisher, like recommended I. You have so much experience in the arena that I. It sounds like you were aware that you wanted to do that anyway or. Or knew that you could rely on a service like that. But it's cool that your hybrid publisher still was like, hey, this is something that you can. You need to do or consider doing.

Evette Davis:

Well, I don't know if every writer knows this, and, Emily, I'm curious about whether this is for you, but when, When. When we first start a book, in the process with our publisher, we have to fill out something called a tip sheet, which is like, what is your book? What are the other books that are like it? What are the comparative titles? What kind of TV shows would you compare it to? I mean, there's a significant amount of work because, like, if you look at mine, they go like, if you love True Blood, you'll love this book or whatever. And if you like Discovery of Witches, and I'm like, yes, if you love Discovery of Witches, you should read my book. Cause I read discovery witches, like, 20 times. But. And then they say after, if you're not going to market your book, if you're not going to have any publicity, you need to tell Simon and Schuster right now, because they're not going to walk into a bookstore and, like, insist that they buy your book if you're not going to do anything to put somebody in the store. And again, this goes back to Emily, what you were saying about a business decision. On some level, as much as you want to be romantic, you got to be pragmatic about what you're asking other people to do in your service as a writer, particularly if you're either through a traditional or a hybrid publisher. It's their job to sell books. And I'm paying. I just got my first royalty check. And I assure you, it does not cover the cost of what I'm doing. But there is a picture of me holding it up. But it's like, that's the. That was my job. My job was to sell these books. And in order to do that, I have to help people sell. And so I think if you're really serious about being a writer, on some level, you have to. You have to understand the things you need to do for other people.

Emily:

So, yeah, yeah, I think that's always true. Right. Like, if you're not willing to show up for your own book, like, why would anybody else, even if they paid you for it? And so I think there's a question of, you know, how you show up. What's the best way to show up for you, you know, those types of questions. But whether you can just go there. I think There are very few authors who could just go hide. And even those authors, they're getting pressure from, you know, their publishers to, to show up. So I think, yeah, unless you're lucky enough to be one of the 1% that has that word of mouth. Right. That catches fire. Like, you gotta show up for your books. And it's hard. And it's a universally hard experience, I think on any publishing path, you finish the book, like you said, the fun part is over, and now you have to go talk about it. But, like, that's the only that, like, you have to. That's like the baseline of what you have to be doing to get it in people's hands. You can't control what other people aren't going to do. Even if you are traditionally published. Like, there's no guarantee of what your publisher is going to, you know, how they're going to show up for you. So the only guarantee is how you're going to show up for yourself.

Evette Davis:

That's right. That's a good point. Yeah.

Rachel:

So I can switch us gears or switch our gears for a second. This series that you're working on now through the hybrid publisher is rereleased. So. And we've talked about how you've had to change things. But did you go directly to that publisher to pitch them or did you have an agent or what was that like to get involved with them?

Evette Davis:

No, I just submitted it. I mean, I think because I knew Brooke, the publisher and founder, I had a little bit of an advantage. We had been on a couple panels about self publishing years prior and I, I was introduced to somebody who had just published a novel through Spark Press. Few mutual friends. So I have two friends. That one just actually published her first, her first book. It's actually like a. A nonfiction book about sustainable ambition and how to, as a professional, like, sustain your ambition. But she introduced me to her friend who had just published a kind of techno thriller through Spark Prize. And it reminded me, oh, I know Brooke. And so I just sent her a note showing up for myself. Emily. I just sent her a note saying, hey, would you be interested in helping me republish his trilogy? I've got the third book, mostly finished. It's finished now. And we took the books and reviewed them and said, yeah, we'll take it on. So that was the beginning of the process. And that was, you know, more than a year ago, I guess. It's two, it's almost two years now at this point because we had to get the others rewritten and change the title. And the COVID and then the gift. And now the third book, the campaign is in its. I just have the first pages back and I'm editing them right now. Okay.

Rachel:

I was going to ask about timeline. So when you. When you approached Spark Press, did you already have. Did you. Had you already taken another pass on editing the finished manuscripts of the first one? Or was it like, I know I. This probably needs to be done, or let's read.

Evette Davis:

I hadn't done any editing of the first two books, so they came back to me. And, yeah, it was a. It was a. It was a trip.

Rachel:

Yeah. What was that like to be like, these are done books and then here are all these notes.

Evette Davis:

So I wrote the first book in the second book, and then I spent five years working on 48 states, which was a kind of an accidental interruption. I had been introduced to an agent. She wasn't interested in that series. She asked me if I had first pages of another novel I was working on. I gave her 48 states. She said she liked it, she wanted to publish it. I finished the book. She wouldn't take it. And then I submitted it to a couple writing contests. I got really good feedback. I fired my old editor, I hired a new one, and I took it through extensive revisions. And at the same time, my dad had dementia. I was taking care of him. I had a teenager getting into high school, so it was like a long hiatus. And then I started working on the third book in the trilogy. And the reason I'm saying this is in the middle of all this, I wrote 48 states. I got a star review from Kirkus. It was named one of the best indie books of the year. And now I have to go back to one of the first novels I ever wrote.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Evette Davis:

And I'm looking at it and I'm like, this is the first one of the first. You know, everything about it is like, you know, it's like my writing isn't as tight, my observations aren't as crisp. And so I'm going through it and there's only so much. It's not going to go through an entire developmental edit. So it was a little bit painful, to be honest. I. It was like it made me nervous re releasing it. Kirkus didn't like it that much. I'm just being totally honest. And I'm like, yeah, I bet they feel like I went back in time. So I regressed in time. Right. Because it looks like my writing is actually not as tight as it is second book, better. And now my, you know, now I Come to my third book and it's like, this is where my writing really is now. Because now you're five, six novels in, obviously, Night and Day in terms of my command and what I expect of myself and what I can do so is a little bit painful. There are moments of deep vulnerability that I was sort of like, should I have done this? But I had to do it this way. I can't. You can't just sell one book in a trilogy to a publisher. You have to make the whole thing work. So, so, but it's like one of these things. Later I'm going to be on a panel and they're going to be like, you know, read something that was lame. Now that you know you're writing so great, you're going to be like, well, the first book wasn't lame, but it was just plotting. It was different. And it's also. You're going up to take people into a trilogy. And so you've got all this work you have to do to move them into that place. This book is a tight little kind of speed car. And then the third book is just like an exception. Explosive, like concussion. You know, it's, it's. And it's fun. It's one of the best things I've ever written. I'm really excited about it. But it's been humbling to go back and in some ways gratifying because I, I did learn, I did get better.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Evette Davis:

But I got a better editor who I love, who really helped me to become a better writer. Mercilessly. That's.

Emily:

That's what a good editor does. Yeah, exactly.

Evette Davis:

Yeah.

Rachel:

Yeah. I don't think we've said the name of the, of the books in order, so I wanted to say them to everybody. The others, the gift and the campaign.

Evette Davis:

That's right.

Rachel:

Those are the three books.

Evette Davis:

Awesome. Called the Council Trilogy because the Council is the name of the secret society of witches and vampires based in San Francisco that they interfere in politics to save the world from nationalism and xenophobia and sorry to say, it's fiction.

Emily:

Sorry.

Evette Davis:

Or yeah, that's the way we go. So. But I think the books are. I started writing the books because I was frustrated with how hard it was to be a political consultant in a male dominated society. And I was contemplating and struggling with how women derive their power and how they maintain it. And in fact, if you look at all of my writing, it's really a lot about women leaders, what it means to be a woman leader, how do we do it, how do we reconcile the other parts of ourselves, the parts of us that are mothers, the parts of us that are wives, lovers, whatever. And it's a fascinating journey, and I never get tired of writing about it, you know, and. And how we mess it up and get it back and, you know, what we do with it.

Rachel:

Yes. I think I'll always write about women gaining power. I think that's just next 10 books I've got planned. That's all they are.

Evette Davis:

Yeah. And I think women enjoy it. I think. I think men. I think men, you know, enjoy reading about it, too. I don't want to leave them out, but I think more than ever, I think women like it and they need it, and it's. It's empowering.

Rachel:

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. So when you. When you went to Spark Press a year ago, and then the first book was rereleased in September, so was that like six months or a little bit longer than that to, like, get all the edits complete on the others and get, you know, the new cover? I mean, that must also been so exciting to, like, have a brand new cover.

Evette Davis:

It was, and it was really exciting. Six to eight months, probably, and then a little bit faster for the gift. Maybe six months. And around the same six or seven months for the campaign. I. I needed to finish that book, and I was in the middle of doing these two, so it put a lot of pressure on me to, like, you know, get my act in gear. But, you know, there's a little bit of wiggle room. But so it's September, March, September, in terms of the books releases, and I thought that was good for them because, you know, if you really like a book series, then you're looking. You're like, what, I have to wait, like, two years for this book to come? I don't want to do that, you know, So I was kind of. I wanted to give people a fast fix in case they were really, you know, interested.

Rachel:

Yeah, yeah. Have you found. So we. Before we started recording, we were talking about, like, the juggling of the day job. Right.

Evette Davis:

With.

Rachel:

With the whole author journey. What has been, like, your experience with your publisher kind of being aware of that? I mean, I. Life happens. Right. And have you had a positive experience with life happening with Sparkbrush?

Evette Davis:

Yeah, no, they've been wonderful. They've been wonderful, and they've been very understanding. I mean, look, I'm pretty disciplined, and if I can't make a deadline, I give them a long window. Like, I sent one of those I'm really sorry notes a few days ago about not Getting my first pages back to them. I'm going to finish it tonight, I swear. Um, but I sold my company in July after 25 years and I'm still working for them. But I. Not that I thought I was going to retire, but I kind of thought I'd be like, have a little bit of a lighter workload. And that didn't turn out to be true. And so I'm just working like 15 hour days. Um, but this goes back to sort of like if you make a decision to be a writer, this is my commitment to myself. And so I was up until midnight last night. I will stay up until whatever time I need. I don't, you know, I know there's like a lot of romantic stuff about writers. I don't drink, even at dinner if I'm going to write later on. I mean, when I'm writing, I'm writing and I usually start with some kind of like writing exercise. I'll write a letter or I'll do some reading or research or something. But you know, I just, this is what I made a commitment to do. I've given up going on vacation. I've been in the house while my family was skiing. I've, I've not watched television. I don't know the first thing about some parts of modern culture. Like I'm, you know, but that's my, that's what I did. I made that decision. And honestly, if you asked me if I wanted to stay home and work on a new novel or like go out, I would stay home and work on it.

Emily:

Like I, Every time, every time, I don't.

Evette Davis:

I mean, I'm worried sometimes that I'm like, you know, and I want to be like Charles Schultz and live in my room the entire time with the band in my family. Sometimes I say to my husband because, you know, my daughter's grown and he's, you know, he, he could watch the warriors game without me or the Giant, whatever. And I'm like, I can't. I'm going up to my writer studio. Like, I'll see you later. So I try to balance it and not be too much of a hermit, but I, I love it, you know, and I'm willing to make the commitment. So. And they're great and I think Spark Press is great and I think they empower women. And you know, they started off as mostly like a memoir publishing, but there's a lot of non traditional authors and women who are older who have been able to publish their books. And I just, I think that's Fabulous. You know, you can imagine you're 60, 70 years old and you finally get a novel out that you always wanted to. I mean, my hat's off to them and what they've done. Um, I think it's super impressive.

Rachel:

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, it sounds like this. I know a couple authors that have hybrid published and it just sounds a lot more accessible and like they're finding writers along that same vein that like, probably wouldn't get selected in the traditional route, but want a little more hands on approach than self publishing. And so this is a good option. I mean, this is like the ideal state really, to get a story out that needs to be heard and also to offer you a little more help than you know, because self publishing can be so isolating.

Evette Davis:

But yeah, well, I mean, I think, yeah, I love self publishing. I hope to one day take my, my imprint, Flesh and Bone and actually like publish other women writers. That's one day. My dream will be to help do something a little bit more advanced that's not in the cards right now. So I don't have the time. But I really feel like, you know, the way we communicate our stories and tell our stories is going to keep changing. And that's the fun part of the Internet. The bad part of it is I still think, I think social media is the devil. Like, I hate that I have to go on and sort of tap dance for my dinner, but I'm willing to do it. Yeah. Like, do people really want to see me wandering through Golden Gate park, like, pointing out things that are in the, in the trilogy? Apparently some people do. I don't want to, I don't want to denigrate, but it's like, it just. Is that really what people want or do they want me just to keep writing more interesting things that they can consider? So I, I sometimes I wish I could go back in time and like, get rid of Instagram. I'm just saying.

Rachel:

Social media is hard.

Emily:

Oh, I feel that it is hard.

Rachel:

But as we've said already, you know, if you want your books to be read, you have to show up to tell people to read them. Otherwise no one will read them.

Evette Davis:

Yeah, but when somebody like out of the blue contacts me and says they really like my book or they really enjoyed it, it makes me really happy and I love it. And in fact, just a weirdo thing, I once used to use my garage as a polling place and you know, in my email signature there's always like a little thing that says, like, read my next novel or Whatever. And one day I got a phone call from the, you know, the official number of the elections department for San Francisco, but, and I said, like, there's no election. What's going on? You're like, oh, no, no, I, I just want to know when is the next book in your. I was like, okay, you just want to know how you're going to pick up a reader. Right. So, like, that was my, that was my little claim to fame as the polling place for the city of San Francisco.

Emily:

So there you go.

Evette Davis:

Exactly. That's awesome.

Rachel:

Well, so one of the other notes that we were going to talk about today is author responsibilities within a hybrid publisher. And I think you already touched on that. But is there anything else that we haven't already talked about that, you know, reader or authors should be aware of if they want to go down this route?

Evette Davis:

No, I, I, I do, I do think we talked about it. I mean, I, I think that the unique, the fact that it's a hybrid is a business decision in terms of what you pay. But in all other respects, I think it's identical to having a traditional publisher. I mean, you have deadlines, you have expectations about the quality of your work, you have expectations about marketing your book, you know, what you do and how you interact with the public. I mean, I, I've seen writers fired from this hybrid press for, like, getting in fights with people on, you know, TikTok or whatever. I mean, so it isn't self publishing. Also, shouldn't, it's not a hobby. If you're deciding to publish a book and put it out there, you need to come with a set of expectations about what you expect from yourself and the quality of what you're putting out there. Unless you want people to know you for a book that has a typo in it. And I just don't, I don't think that's what writers want. They don't.

Rachel:

Right.

Evette Davis:

You know, you want people to love our work and not be distracted by, you know, whatever is in there if it's distracting.

Rachel:

Yeah, yeah.

Emily:

What was the process of. You said you had to, like, apply. Like, was there, like, what's the process at the end? It sounds like maybe it was unique for you because you knew. Yeah, I mean, I think already.

Evette Davis:

But they review your manuscript and they decide whether or not it's a, of the caliber that they would want to have in their publishing library. And then I think for some people, they may be asked to do further developmental edits or they would be put into, you know, just a line edit the way that I was. But even, like, even in my third book. So these books are in English and in French because there's a main character who's a witch who's French and it turns out that his daughter is. Anyway, there's a lot of French language going on and there's a little bit of Serbian and other languages in the second book. But in the third book there was some complicated French language structure. And so I had to hire like a second proofreader who was French. So just that ended up being an extra expense that. Because we didn't really foresee it. But the, you know, there. It was either that or somebody who was French is going to read it and tell me that my grammar was wrong or the census, you know. So I think, I think that they wouldn't just take your first novel. You know what I mean? You have to have some. You have to either have a track record as a published author, or I think you have to have a manuscript that meets their expectations. And I assume that if it wasn't Brooke, there must be like a committee of people who review it. But I happened to luck out by just busting down the door to the publisher herself. But I have no doubt in my mind that if, if, if Brooke had not liked those books, she would have said no or go back and fix them or whatever. She had no reason to be nice to me at the expense of the reputation of her publishing house.

Rachel:

Exactly.

Evette Davis:

It's a business. It is. And you gotta, as hard as it is, if somebody rejects your book, if you can find a way to figure out what it is that you're doing that you could fix the. I mean, unless it's just completely, you know, terrible, there's a developmental fix that can help you if you're just willing to sit down and work on it. It's extremely difficult for people, I think, even first time writers, to understand that the first book that you write is not the book that you're publishing.

Rachel:

Yeah, yeah. It's rare for that to happen. Very rare for that to happen.

Evette Davis:

Yeah, I love those stories, but they're really not the true story of most people. And, you know, the, even the books that you really, really love, if you went back, you can see little things. You might, you know, you might just fix it if you had a chance or whatever.

Rachel:

So, yeah, I feel like that makes me. I know in 10 years from now I'm gonna look back and I hope that I don't have like a little anxiety attack of like, oh, if only I could. I Did the best I could at the time.

Evette Davis:

You know, did you see some writers, like Kit Rocha is one. You see others, they re release books under new titles or do things. I mean, I do think that you can also think of that as a chance to, like, fix wrongs or change things that you now have the power to change or. I don't know. I look at people like Jerry Brown, who ran for governor twice. He was better as governor of second time. Right. Like, sometimes second chances are, they're, they're, you know, they're great opportunities. But I think that a lot of people just think you, like, write, you have a great idea and you write the novel and the first time and it's like, boom, you're done, you're going to be famous. And you're like, really? The process. I really like that. I really like the Rubik's Cube of fixing my writing and figuring out how to do things. And it's obviously very difficult, but I do love the process of getting over it and then going back and rereading things and being like, oh, yeah, I figured that out, you know.

Rachel:

Yeah, you're a reviser. It sounds like you're a plotter. It sounds like you're a reviser.

Evette Davis:

Yeah. And also, I mean, I write for a living and I teach, you know, the people who work for me how to write and to write in a way that's impactful. And I'm always asking people, what are you trying to say? Yeah, what are you trying to tell people, you know, and what kind of story are you trying to tell? You know, to me, that's the most fun part of writing. Although I'm, you know, I don't know. I. I have deep things that I think about in my writing. But at the end of the day, I want people to stay up all night or be on an airplane and have five hours pass. I want them just to have a really good time and be involved in something that is thrilling to them.

Rachel:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I write. I want to. I want to make people feel the way I feel when

I stay up, like last night until 1:

00am that's what.

Evette Davis:

I. Yeah, I stayed up almost until 2:00am last night. I have a. When I want to relax, I read these really, like, seriously wonderful trashy historic romance novels by Lisa Kalpis about this group of wallflowers that all, like, marry these amazing, like, dukes. But I've read. I reread them all and then I've reread the ones about their kids, but Honestly, they're so satisfying sometimes. My husband calls it chardonnay and I'm like, yeah, okay, fine, whatever. Have my chardonnay. It's fine. But it's hard to write a good romance novel. I don't think people understand, you know, like.

Emily:

Yeah, yeah, it's easy to read them. It's not hard to put them together.

Evette Davis:

Yes. But I mean, if you can sit down and be reading until three in the morning and like you don't care and then you have to get up at 6, that's a good book.

Rachel:

In the moment, I'm like, I will not regret this. And then later I'm like, I'm tired, but I don't regret.

Evette Davis:

Do you also have a 4 year old? So like somebody's like poking your eye at like 4 or 5 in the morning? Hi. Good morning.

Rachel:

For real? Yes. Like I went to bed last night at one, I finished a book. It ended on a cliffhanger, so I had to start the next one, read the first couple chapters just so I like could see, you know, where we were going with this ending. And then most of the time my dog, my daughter's has never been historically a wonderful sleeper. But 6am 6am this morning I was like, you haven't gotten up at 6am in months. Why, why are we.

Evette Davis:

She senses, she senses.

Rachel:

She was like, oh, yeah, let's be tired today.

Evette Davis:

Yeah, there's no naps. So sorry.

Rachel:

Yes. Love it. Awesome. Well, Emily, do you have any other questions? I think we can start.

Evette Davis:

Awesome.

Emily:

No. Yeah, tell us where to find you.

Rachel:

Yes.

Emily:

How can readers find your books?

Rachel:

Oh my gosh.

Evette Davis:

Well, they're, they're all. At all the, you can buy the books at all the traditional places. They're in local bookstores, which I hope people will go to first. They're available through Barnes and Noble and Apple and Amazon. And so if you just Google Yvette Davis the gift, you should be able to find it. And they're also in public libraries, which I'm a big supporter of. Public libraries. It's something that's been a professional pro bono kind of thing for me in San Francisco. I've helped raise a lot of money to rebuild the library branches. So. Yeah, and send me an email if you read my book and let me know what you think.

Rachel:

I love that. And we will have links to your website and everything in the show notes, so everyone can go check that out too.

Evette Davis:

Thank you.

Rachel:

Thank you so much for coming on. This is such a great discussion.

Emily:

If you want to build a successful, fulfilling and sustainable writing life that works for you. You've gotta get on our email list.

Rachel:

Sign up now to get our free email course, the Magic of Character Arcs. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.

Emily:

Link in the show notes. We'll see you there. Thank you.