I was thinking about Chappel Roan at the Grammies asking the record companies to pay their musicians a living wage and it got me thinking… if a publisher — one of the big five, say — started offering authors a monthly salary instead of an advance, would you take it?
A monthly salary, with a pension plan, health care (very important for our US cousins) paid holidays, maybe even expenses?
You could be on a fixed contract: 3 years or 5, but you have to deliver a book a year. Oh, and you have to write what the publisher wants (which, arguably, is happening more and more in traditional publishing), and you don’t retain copyright or get any royalties (which is kind of what happens in TV). Maybe you get a bonus for hitting sales targets? Would you do it?
Is anyone doing it already? I doubt it as the current system is very much weighed in the favour of the publishers… but if you’re an author, would you be tempted by a monthly salary with all the benefits and strings attached?
This month’s special guest Nicola May reveals the biggest mistakes (sorry… “learnings”!) of her writing career…
TRANSCRIPT
MARK: What’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made in your writing career?
NICOLA: Now I like to call them learnings, Mark Stay, not mistakes.
MARK: Okay. Very good, very good. Yes, I like that. Yes. Good.
NICOLA: I’ve made many learnings. One of them, actually I went with W.H. Howes for the Corner Shop in Cockleberry Bay for my audiobook. There’s nothing wrong with W.H. Howes. I was jobbing at the time. I’d given up a big corporate job. I got offered 500 pounds advance. I was like, wow, I’ll take that. Thank you very much. Yeah, yeah, a big mistake because I now know how to create my own audiobooks. The other three, I’m making a very nice living, thank you very much. Because audiobooks really heightened in the last year. So again, I think the moral of this tale is if you’re just starting out and somebody does offer you something, don’t snap at the first thing because you know you’re good enough. But if somebody big like… or anyone offers you something, so take a step back and think, okay, maybe I should go and look at other avenues rather than jump at the first opportunity with anything, with an agent, with a publisher, because we all get so excited. But I think if someone thinks you’re good enough a lot of other people will. So that’s my little bit of advice on that one. My other mistake, and I shouldn’t really call it a learning, is not to go with one of the top five publishers and be traditionally published. It was something I always dreamt of. I thought, this will make me… I will be a world wide international superstar. I signed a three book deal for the Ferry books. Don’t get me wrong, I was… The advance was incredible, but the marketing wasn’t after, and I felt that I had… I was a million miles away from the people who I was dealing with at the publisher. And I think because I’m such a control freak, being an indie publisher, I didn’t like that lack of control. So it’s almost… I don’t think I actually marketed those books as well as I did in my other books, because I kind of lost a bit of heart, to be honest. So again… but it’s not for me… for somebody it would be the most amazing thing in the world to be with a trad pub, but it didn’t work for me.
This month’s special guest Nicola May reveals her tips for marketing romcom fiction…
TRANSCRIPT
MARK: (Reading a question from GB Ralph) “How do you reach your rom com readers and market to them? Romcoms can cross so many other genres: romance, comedy, women’s fiction, but don’t really fit into any one of them, which can make it tricky.” So yeah, the marketing of them. Have you identified who your readers are? Do you find that with your different series you’re marketing to slightly different people? Is there any kind of knack to this?
NICOLA: You know what, I’ve had the most scattergun approach to marketing my whole writing career. Sometimes I don’t actually know how I’ve been so successful (laughs), but I think is I just I talk a lot and I share a lot, and I think I’ve had such ground work from when I started out way back in like 2011, when the first one came out, that I’ve just created an audience by being repetitive, because I haven’t even got that many followers on any of my things. And but you know what I will say as well, Amazon is King. Once the algorithm hits, you get you over your 50 reviews once. And I think with KDP, they obviously want you to do well because they do well out of you as well. They will then give you the deals and throw you out there. I have got a mailing list and if I tell you how many are on my mailing list, people won’t believe it. They will gasp… 258!
MARK: (gasps!)
NICOLA: Because when I started out, when I started out with Cockleberry Bay, obviously Amazon just alert people when a new book comes out. So I’ve got a lot of followers on Amazon, but post and I didn’t think that. Now again, one of my mistakes… I should set up a mailing list. I never bothered. I don’t pay now for any Amazon advertising because I don’t know how to do it. I do think… now I don’t know if other authors find it more difficult now, but I could spend £100 and it’s gone within seconds.
MARK: I mean, it’s the thing we’ve shown the Cockleberry Bay, the Ferry Lane, How Do I Tell You? But how many books have you written in all? Was it 18?
NICOLA: I’ve written 18 now. Yeah, so I was writing two a year. Yeah, I’m lazy now. I’m writing one a year now.
MARK: I don’t think anyone’s going accuse you of being lazy. I’ve said this again and again. Resilience counts for a lot in this game. It really does. You’re going to have the ups and downs, the lows and highs. And it’s… you just got to hang in there haven’t you?
NICOLA: Well my motto is persistence over resistance. I’ve had so many no’s, I’ve made so many mistakes, but I think it is… just keep doing little things and keep… just every day and you will get results.
NICOLA: Don’t let anything or anyone stop you because at the London Book Fair I once and chased after the book buyer of WH Smiths with Love Me Tinder and I said, “Go on, you know, you want to put this in your shop, but it ended up in WH Smiths Travel. Do you know what I mean? It’s like you’ve got to take chances.
MARK: Yeah, yeah. Oh, I love that. Absolutely love it
Nicola May is the author of heartwarming and funny romantic comedies, including the hugely successful Ferry Lane and Cockleberry Bay series, she’s a great champion for indie authors and she’s here to kick off 2025 with another bestseller ‘How Do I Tell You?’
We discuss:
Tips for writing romcoms
The key differences between self publishing, traditional publishing and digital-first publishers
Balancing serious themes with heartwarming fiction
I had the best time discussing the classic novelisation of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan by Vonda N McIntyre with the Authorized podcast gang. I discuss my relationship with the film and the book and how both have inspired me as a writer…
I’ll be chatting to Simon Goddard about the latest of his books chronicling the career of David Bowie. He’s up to 1974, the year in which one man is trying to find his soul in a world that’s gone to the devil. Wickedly funny and shockingly tragic.
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Mark Stay Writes 