A conversation with romance author Kilby Blades about changes the traditional publishing industry needs to make in order to be an inclusive space for writers of color.
A conversation with romance author Kilby Blades about changes the traditional publishing industry needs to make in order to be an inclusive space for writers of color.
Website: http://www.kilbyblades.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kilbyblades
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Mary: Hello, this is Mary Kole and the "Good Story Podcast", helping writers craft a good story. With me, you will hear from thought leaders related to writing and sometimes not about topics important to writers of all categories and ability levels. Here is to telling a good story.
Thank you so much for joining me. This is Mary Kole and the "Good Story Podcast." With me today, I'm thrilled to welcome Kilby Blades, who is a writer of women's fiction and romance. Kilby, can you please do the honors and tell listeners a little bit more about yourself?
Kilby: Sure. I'm Kilby Blades. I write romance and women's fiction. I've been writing my entire life but I started publishing in 2017. I'm hybrid published, so some of my titles are self-published and some of my titles are traditionally published. And I say that I write 21st-century feminist fiction with a social justice slant.
Mary: Very, very cool. And how many titles do you have out?
Kilby: I've published, I think, about seven novels, four novellas, and I've been in some anthologies and done some short stories as well. So I like all kinds of different projects and all sorts of different lengths. The majority of what I've published are full-length romances and I'm moving into a little bit more women's fiction now.
Mary: Very cool. So this conversation initially took roots over that social justice angle that you, sort of, packaged it very nicely. You have a social justice bent to your work. Could you talk a little bit more about what that means to you and we'll talk about the publishing industry as you see it, your experiences there, how you do, or do not weave social justice elements into your work. This is really at the heart of what I'd love to get into.
Kilby: Well, the first thing to know about romance and the genre of romance, as it defines itself, is that a romance is a story that centers around two, sometimes more, characters with a happily ever after. So, as you look at my library, if you were to go to my Author Page on Amazon, you would see a lot of couples on book covers and hearts in some cases and other things that are quite romantic. But, you know, their stories are about people and people have a lot of things going on in their lives. And the people who I write about, tend to be dealing with what I call 21st-century problems. So a lot of my heroines are, you know, in addition to falling in love, are dealing with what it means to, you know, be a woman at this point in time when the expectation isn't that you marry. How do you have a love life alongside the rest of your life and what does modern love look like? So that's where I get the feminism from, because my books are talking about love through the perspective of the role of women right now in society.
I am black. Some of my characters are black, and some of my couples are interracial couples. And so, as my couples are falling in love, part of what my books are also talking about is what it means to be in an interracial relationship right now in modern society. So those are my 21st-century problems because, you know, just as Jane Austen wrote about problems during that era and what it meant to be a woman and what it meant to be of a certain social class, those sorts of things are so relevant to stories today. So, ostensibly, I write about romance. But a lot of what I am writing about is what life is like right now.
Mary: That is fantastic. And like you said, you've written, you gave me a really lovely rundown of some of your work. You've written white characters. You've written mixed-race characters, those in interracial relationships. You've written black characters. So given this viewpoint that you have and you're noodling a new idea or maybe working through an idea that's already percolating, can you talk a little bit more about how you decide who you want to showcase as a character, how you inhabit their shoes, and how you want to treat any potential social justice or feminism issues in the book? I really want to hear about how overtly or covertly you tackle those sorts of things in the work?
Kilby: You know, I think one of the tricky things about being an author is that you have to write what inspires you and you have to do it in a way in which you write what you know. And I think it's a myth, particularly for authors who are non-white, that the only things that they know and that they should be writing about are characters who look exactly like them. My favorite example of this is actually related to a book that I haven't published yet. It's a book that I have written and something that's true of me and my personal life is that I am a sommelier. I used to be a former food, wine, and travel writer so...
Mary: No way. That's awesome.
Kilby: So I wrote this story about wine. And I wanted to write a story about a family feud and I wanted to write a story about a wine feud. And it's about this multigenerational wine empire. Two families started it together. And then there was a rift and then, you know, the two partners split and then it turned into a feud and 100 years later, their relatives are still feuding. And I've shopped this book to traditional publishing as a book I have available to sell and a lot of agents haven't been able to get over "Well, I don't understand why you're a black woman who's writing about these white people. I would really like to see a story about black winemakers." And, you know, this, to me, gets at the issue of who writes what, and why are we writing, and what inspires us creatively. And how do we bring our own perspectives into books, even if the protagonists in those books don't look exactly like us? So the interesting thing about this book is that, you know, historically speaking, it doesn't make sense for this to be black winemakers. There probably wouldn't have been a family feud between black winemakers in the Pacific Northwest, right. You know, 100 years ago, right. Like that just doesn't make sense.
Mary: The wine world has its own gender and diversity issues.
Kilby: Right. The wine world has its own gender and diversity issues. But as somebody who is a wine enthusiast, I absolutely should be writing stories about wine, right? Because it's something that I love and it's something I should be writing about. But the family feud itself is also an allegory why the groups who don't get along not get along and what are the preconceived notions that one family has about the other family. And when it comes down to it, there is a lot in that family feud that I draw from my experience about race relations in this country. So, to me, that's a really good example of how it's simply tricky to say that people should be writing people who look like them because I think that if an author has the capacity to, you know, understand certain issues thematically, those issues can be applied to a number of different situations and a number of different stories.
Mary: There's a lot I want to ask you specifically piggy-backing on this example, but I think the burning question that a lot of writers who are listening do have, is this idea of the expectation that we stay in our lane and write from our experience, right. And this is the premise that you are rejecting here. So if a writer has a desire to tell a story of a character who is unlike them by demographic, some kind of demographic metric, what do you think is the right approach to that writer? And we'll talk about the publishing industry piece, the publishing expectation piece, I'm sure later, I would love to get into that, but if I'm a writer and I'm considering the story, and I'm thinking, "Well, am I even 'allowed' to tell the story?" What do you think is a good way to approach that story for that writer?
Kilby: I think that writers need to be committed to writing what they know and they need to fight for the ability to write what they know. One way that this comes across in romance a lot is, you know, the whole unvoiced question is around "Well, why is it that it's not okay for one person to write outside of their racial or ethnic group but it's okay for us to write, like, paranormal romance?" Like, why is it okay for somebody to write vampires? Are you a vampire? Should only vampires write vampires? Why is it okay for you to put yourself in the shoes of, you know, a type of creature who you can't claim understanding for, but it's not okay for you to put yourself in the shoes of, you know, somebody who's of a different racial or ethnic group. So my view on it is that writers should write who and what they want, but they need to use the judgment around whether or not they really know that group and they need to be accountable for questions about how well they know that group.
I'm really comfortable writing white people. There are people who don't like that I write white people and who don't ask me about why I write white people. But I'm somebody who's never lived in a black neighborhood in my entire life. I grew up...I've never lived in, apart from when I lived in New York City and apart from when I've lived in Chicago, the life that I've lived in suburbia, I've lived in towns that had fewer than, you know, 2% or 3% black people. I really, really understand white people. And yeah, I'm comfortable writing white people because I really understand them. But I still write white people as a black person. So when I write my white characters, white privilege comes onto the page in a way that it might not, if a white character was writing it. And I think that we need to see value in that as well because there is value in non-white writers writing white characters and talking about whiteness. That is something that should be out there.
Mary: Let me ask you this and this is a bit of a tough question that kind of holds the industry to a count. Do you think that different groups of people are treated differently in terms of the expectation of whether or not they can or "should" be writing the experiences of others? Like is a white man writing a female character treated and maybe accepted differently than a woman trying to write a male character or a white writer trying to write a character of color? Are they treated differently than a writer of color writing a white character?
Kilby: Undeniably, there have been double standards historically, right. Because we see what publishers acquire and publishers have certainly acquired many, many books from authors who were not writing from their perspective and, you know, that turned out to be problematic and, you know, the publishers came under fire for that. And at the same time, you have a long history of publishers, you know, not acquiring work from non-white authors, yet publishing books about non-white characters. So I think there have been a lot of problems historically and I don't think the publishing industry has figured it out. I think the publishing industry is trying to figure it out but I think it still has a really spotty track record with what it publishes and by whom. And are they really thinking about what they put out there? I mean, we see what has recently happened with "American Dirt."
Mary: Yeah, I'm very happy for the conversations that have been coming to life. For example, very recently, we had the publishing page me#, which was basically an information dump of various advances received by writers of every demographic across the board, volunteering their, you know, how they've been compensated and, of course, glaring inequality is, as suspected, have come to light. But this is a really painful question for a lot of writers when they're thinking about their next books or writing a character that's sort of outside of their experience. And so, I'm always looking for, kind of, advice to give to writers in terms of how best to do it, to do it authentically, to do it with good intention. How do you make the... What were you gonna say?
Kilby: Well, I was gonna say I think it's important to be conscious about whether you would be displacing somebody else who might be the person who should be telling the story. So I, as a black author, I don't worry about writing white characters. I don't worry about whether me writing white characters is reducing opportunity for white authors because white authors have opportunities to be published. So I have zero guilt about writing white characters. I think, on the other side, there's that question of just because I can write about somebody, should I? And do I have power and privilege in a situation that's making it so that if my publisher publishes my story about a neurodiverse character, and I am not neurodiverse?
Mary: Does that maybe take away the opportunity for somebody who does have that lived experience to tell that story?
Kilby: Right, and also to be honest about the publisher's track record. I mean, if you were with the publisher, you can, you know, go see what's being said about that publisher. And if you're listening to social media and other things, and you're hearing reports of people from a certain group not being able to get published, I would say, probably don't inhabit that space.
Mary: To me, it kind of goes back to intention. Kind of why are you feeling called to tell the story in the way that you're feeling that you need to tell it and what else might be going on situationally that could affect your decision. I mean, the truth is that inequality exists in the publishing world, very much so. And I do think that there is some truth to this idea that sometimes, people telling other people stories can displace other writers having that opportunity. Do you personally feel like movements within publishing, like we need diverse books and own voices, whether they've gone far enough to try and address the problem, or have been a move in the right direction, or are maybe misguided in their own way?
Kilby: I think they are very necessary. I think, if nothing else, they've awakened readers to what's going on. I think they have made authors who may not have been aware what some of their diverse colleagues were experiencing, I think it's made authors more aware. And I've definitely seen authors doing a lot of the work of "we need diverse voices," by, you know, amplifying authors from marginalized groups, by inviting authors from marginalized groups into, you know, into circles that they might not have access to. There are definitely authors who are doing that work, even where industry isn't because the authors themselves are more aware. But, you know, the big gatekeepers are industry, right, so I think, where I view us right now is at a place where there's something that's referred to as a virtue signalling, right, where nobody wants to be on the wrong side of the issue. So when we get these big calls where we need diverse books, you get a lot of publishers saying, "Oh yes, we absolutely want diverse books." And then what I hear on my end is that well, so there are more invitations to submit, there's more access to agents and editors, but how many people are actually getting acquired? What are people actually buying? And if you go take a look at Publishers Marketplace, you can see what people are actually buying, right. And in some cases, for some publishers, you know, some agencies, it's not changing much. So I think that's the next step, getting people to go beyond, you know, saying that diversity is important to them and figuring out how the industry gatekeepers are really sticking by that.
Mary: And you shared with me in your initial email that, you know, you've received feedback that doesn't seem consistent with this virtue signalling messaging where, "Yes, bring it on. We need diverse books," because you've actually heard feedback, for example, you know, "Why does this black character have all of these problems? Is it gonna be relatable to readers?" And some of the feedback is couched in these terms of like, "Oh, relatability and character." But your reaction is "Well, yeah, she does actually have problems. That's the way it is." And so maybe you've found that even in your own experience, some of these editors and agents were not as receptive when it came down to it.
Kilby: Yeah, I think romance is interesting in the sense that a lot of romances, you know, they're really supposed to be very, very fast. They start very quickly. They jump right in. They're supposed to be light-hearted, and they're supposed to be uplifting. And that's absolutely what romance should be. At the same time, I do think that the characters who I write have elements of their lives that are simply complex. I mean, if I'm writing a black woman, black women are among the most marginalized people in American society. Black women have problems that not everybody has, and for me, it's been difficult to write realistic black characters who somehow don't have problems. And what you get, sometimes, in romances, you get these highly idealized worlds where your characters don't have very many problems. So I think that striking that balance between escapism but realism has been a challenge for me as a black author because I think that in some, you know, in some romance world, in some romantic setting, depending on your characters, you can get away with, you know, this sort of extreme privilege that makes a bunch of things non-issues, but I think it's harder to convey. I think it's harder to show extreme privilege for marginalized people. And something that I've heard from my other friends is that when they've submitted characters from minority groups who do seem to have extreme privilege, they've gotten rejections saying, "You'll never have a black woman as a billionaire," or "You'll never have a black man as a CEO." And they get that as well. For me, the landscape is really tricky.
Mary: I think that's really interesting, just this idea of you being told what the experience is, when the industry, on the other hand, is saying, "We need more voices to show what the experience is." Is that maddening? That seems like it would be very confounding.
Kilby: It is. But, you know, I think it's not just in the industry either. You know, there are plenty of people who are not in the industry, who, you know, who make real distinctions among what marginalized authors are writing. So you've got people who, you know, don't like interracial romance, and I understand elements of that. I think that some interracial romance has real issues with, you know, creating these kind of like white savior dynamics that are problematic but it creates some controversy over interracial romance. There's kind of controversy everywhere in the diverse romance space, in my opinion.
Mary: And romance is one of these, and you mentioned it right at the beginning of this interview, as one of these very, kind of, trope-heavy categories with a lot of expectations that, kind of...Readers come to the page with expectations. The publishers have certain expectations and bibles that they like to use for, kind of, what makes a romance, kind of, fit their brand. And so, you have a lot of, sort of, hoops to jump through in addition to the story that you're telling.
Kilby: Yeah, there is. And I think that's also a bit of an enemy to diverse voices in that genre because romance can be formulaic. It's, kind of like, you know, readers want the same dopamine rush.
Mary: Over and over.
Kilby: Over and over again. And how do you, you know, convince industry that you're giving them that dopamine rush if it doesn't immediately seem to fit the formula?
Mary: Now, one other thing that I really loved about your initial email to me introducing yourself was this idea of, sort of, the bigger idea of "issue" books and how you handle some of these ideas, some of these experiences, these characters. You made some really, really interesting points about how "issue" books can sometimes not only shortchange writers or making a book, sort of, "all about" a social justice issue or a feminist issue. Not only can it shortchange the writer but also the reader. Would you mind speaking a little bit more about that?
Kilby: Yeah, I definitely see there's kind of this pendulum where romance in particular, like, exists where it exists and we have all of the biggest books and they're generally, historically, they haven't been by marginalized authors. And then we have these moments where, you know, terribly racist, you know, things seem to be happening in the world or in the romance industry. And then we have these moments where there are these huge pushes for diverse books. And what inevitably happens when we see those pushes are we see a push towards, like, the most ostensibly woke book, so they're [inaudible 00:24:15], right. So not only are we, like, "Let's read more diverse books," but then every diverse book that you have, it, like, has pictures of people of color right on the front of the book. In some cases, it's just like, kind of, beating you over the head with "Oh, this is a completely different book that has non-white characters." It's almost like it's trying to, you know, showcase books that seem as opposite as possible to, you know, to the books that have gotten a lot of attention in the mainstream. So what's challenging to me about that is that, you know, sometimes, it reduces the issue of diversity in the genre to this very kind of like showy version of having diversity in the genres. So another way to say it is, for example, I write feminist romance but you don't see books with, like, the feminism symbol.
Mary: Like nobody is burning a bra on your covers.
Kilby: Yeah, right. Exactly. Like I write feminist romance and there's not a burning bra on the cover. Just because there's not a burning bra on the cover does not mean that I don't write feminist romance. And just because there are not, you know, like, clearly black Americans on my covers doesn't mean that I'm not writing about black people. And it becomes this very showy thing where all of a sudden, everybody wants to be, like, everybody wants to read these books that are as woke as possible. The other thing that I noticed that I actually think is a really mixed outcome of these pushes is that a lot of times, you get, you know, these lists. They're like "Oh my gosh. She should be reading more diverse books. Read these 10 to 20 authors.'' And it's great because those 10 to 20 authors, man, they have earned every accolade that they have, and they should be on those lists, and we should be reading their books. But at the same time, it makes it look like there are only 20 diverse authors and there are way more of us than that. So I also worry about that piece of "Okay. Yes, let's read more diverse books." And how do we do it without making it seem like there are only 20 diverse authors because there are thousands of us, right.
Mary: I especially see that right now. A lot of lists are coming out. A lot of books that are specifically about social justice issues, whether in the fiction space. A lot of non-fiction right now are hitting bestseller status, and going into reprints, and, you know, being plucked from obscurity in a lot of cases because of current events. But another thing that you said really struck me in that this can be a little bit of a self-selecting audience or a confirmation bias, almost in terms of a book's wokeness attracting like-minded people who....you know, there could be a bigger audience for that book of people who are not naturally gonna gravitate toward it.
Kilby: Yeah, I mean, an example of a really great book that is amazing and that everybody should read is "The Hate U Give." That was just an amazing book. But at the same time, there are a lot of people...like, it's so on the nose about racial injustice, like straight from the blurb that the only people who are gonna read that book are people who care about racial injustice. And I worry about that a little bit. I wonder about, you know, how can we just have more books out there that are talking about social injustice that aren't about social injustice? And I think that, you know, it's part of our world, right. I think books should be talking about social injustice, right, because it's part of America. So how do we highlight books that are doing that work that aren't about social justice?
Mary: Which is what you say that you try to do in your books, avoiding this kind of, maybe even on one far extreme, this virtue signalling of like "Look at this diverse book that we acquired. Look at the cover. Doesn't it just scream that it's about a social justice issue?" You seem like you layer in power dynamics and issues of, kind of, power imbalance, not only in terms of race but also in terms of male-female dynamics into your work. How do you make those choices to, sort of, talk about real-world stuff that everybody should be reading about, but maybe in a more nuanced way so that it's not right there, front and center?
Kilby: Yeah, and you're right. I mean, in my books, they're not right there, front and center. You know, I write romance so they're about love stories. If you read the blurbs about my book, it's like "She's scared of, you know, committing, and he's really busy, and how are they gonna end up together." And you know, it starts out as friends with benefits, right. I mean, like, if you read my blurbs, it sounds very romancey. But, you know, my debut novel is about a woman who's dealing with a misogynist boss. And that's a very real world, 21st-century problem. You're a woman who is trying to climb through the ranks. You're smart. You're career-oriented but pretty likely, you're working in a historically male-dominated workplace because those are the realities of modern work life. That's a 21st-century problem. So, I mean, I think for me, the issues come up because it's just realistic to what the world we live in is like. This is what life is like right now for well-educated women. They're still in male-dominated industries for the most part. So that has to be part of her story.
I have another romance where there's the hero, he's wealthy. He grew up in Connecticut. He's very wealthy and he's never taken his black girlfriend home to meet his family because he is ashamed of his casually racist family. That's real. I mean, I am in an interracial relationship and, you know, there's casual racism on both sides of my family, on my side and on his side.
Mary: Holidays must be a hoot.
Kilby: Right. Right. I think that one of the taglines for the book was like, you know, "You'll laugh because it's not your family and you'll cry because it is." Because families are completely crazy and if you're in an interracial relationship, who knows what your family will say to offend the person you love, right. But it's a romance, right. It's totally a romance. You know, there's kissing and, you know, there's a proposal and, like, all of the things that happen in a romance. But it's also true to what happens in actual life when you're in an interracial relationship.
Mary: So how do you weave it in, I mean, you show it in the plot, right, but instead of kind of like pointing to it and saying, "Look at this issue. Look at this misogynistic boss. Look at this casually racist family," how do you then turn it into food for thought for the reader? Do your characters grapple with these things as it's, sort of, something that lands with them or do you just weave it without pointing at it and hope that the reader, kind of, picks up the intellectual inquiry?
Kilby: Some of both. And with the misogynist boss one, the word misogyny is never used in the book and it's just implied. You know, he's hazing her, he doesn't like her, he's blocking her from opportunities that she deserves. Actually, this book also deals a lot with privilege because she is from a wealthy family and the boss, in addition to not liking women very much, believes that she has all sorts of unearned privilege. That is another reason why he hazes her. So it's implied but it's definitely there if you're paying attention. For the other book with the casually racist family, eventually, there is a scene where it all comes to a head, and the hero, you know, really has to lay a few things out for his family.
Mary: With Grandma's strong corn chardonnay and the turkey is roasting in the oven.
Kilby: Yeah, definitely, you can't have a holiday story without some drunk family members.
Mary: But there is still the, I would guess since it's a romance, the partner whose family it is, they stand up for the romantic heroine. Is there understanding or is that maybe not realistic?
Kilby: So, it depends on the character. So at one point in the book, there are obvious moments that, you know, I think if you're a black person and you're reading this, the moments that happen are funny because they've happened to you. So at one moment, a relative compliments his girlfriend and says, "Oh, she speaks so well," which is something that happens to black people. And then there's another moment where she's introduced to some other relatives and the relatives want to tell her about the time that they met Sidney Poitier, and they just want to, like, kind of, dump all these stories about "Oh, here are all the black people who I know. Oh, you're black. Great. Let me tell you a story about some black people who I've come across," right. So, I think if you're black, those moments are, like, funny because they've happened to you. But if you're not black and you're reading that, that moment might be "Oh my gosh. This is something that happens to black people." Yes, it's something that happens to black people. So, I think, depending on who you are, you would read those moments in different ways but still understand that you are being shown part of the experience.
Mary: Now, this is something. I spoke to a black writer for young readers a couple of days ago and this is something that I wanted to get your take on because you're not writing for kids, you're writing for adults. And it was this idea of, you know, "Sure. We want our books to make a difference." With kids' books, probably in a more overt way. They are a little bit more message-driven and, you know, we should have hope or something comes to the forefront. With adult readers, you know, there's maybe a different goal with the book. Certainly, in romance, entertainment, some kind of wish fulfillment are our goals. But, I mean, do you consciously try to bring out about change with the work or do you just, as we've been talking about, kind of, plant the idea and see if it takes root in the reader?
Kilby: I'm not trying to bring about change. I do think it's important that the perspectives are out there. So, I think, by virtue of having different perspectives out there, that's how change happens, even if it's not kind of like right on the nose. And the interesting thing about genre fiction is that there are genres that already do this. I mean, if you, speaking of kind of like allegorical connections, a lot of kind of like science fiction is about you're dealing with different races of people who are battling in, sometimes they're aliens, sometimes there's a lot of the haves versus the have-nots. Like, I think there are themes all over genre fiction that deal with this all the time. And what's interesting is that for some reason, we have a problem with it when it's very directly related to racial diversity and cultural competence.
Mary: And is that coming from the industry, do you think? Is it coming because readers don't want to be confronted? What do you think the root is?
Kilby: Yeah, I mean, I do think that racial identity, sexual identity, gender identity, when dealt with head-on, can make mainstreams readers very uncomfortable. At the same time, I think that there are a lot of people who it doesn't make uncomfortable and I think there's data that industry doesn't look at or listen to about what readers are actually open to.
Mary: Say more about that.
Kilby: You know, so my other training is business. So I've been to business school. I went to a very quantitatively intense business school and I spent a lot of my career in highly quantitative marketing, doing a lot of data analysis. And data analysis is something that a lot of organizations just aren't strong at. I mean, you have to do good data testing. You have to do good tests in order to understand what your audiences want and what your audiences are looking for. And as I look at industry data that I've read about who readers are and what they want, I'm not confident in some of the data testing.
Mary: What data testing is what I would say, as far as the publishing industry is concerned. I mean, one of my business partners is a literary agent and we operate in the children's books space. And we joke all the time that at least, insofar as traditional publishing goes, we're not really trying to find projects that an actual kid would resonate with. We are looking for projects that a 30-something white woman will resonate with because that is, far and away, the demographic of the inquiring body who we have to impress, first and foremost.
Kilby: So, I'll give you a real example of how data, I think, is being misused in the industry. So one thing that we know about black authors, in particular, is that the same number of marketing dollars usually don't put a black authors who are with publishers. I'm talking specifically about the romance industry. The story that we hear from publishers is that a lot of times, they don't think that black authors can tell as well. They don't think that black romance can sell as well. One thing we know about black romance is that it is often shelved, not in the romance section, but it's often shelved in the African-American fiction section. So that's an example of okay, so the industry is basing the sales data, some of its sales observations about black romance on sales, like, for example, in-store sales where they haven't shelved the book correctly. Is that good data? It's probably not, right. So, like, what would actually happen if you shelved black romance where it belonged? Would people buy it if they could see it?
Mary: You could make a like and like comparison. I mean, I think the data that's emerging from publishing, paid me the sort of, amalgamation of advanced information that people are sharing now. I think the sad but not surprising impression that's emerging is that publishers can pay. Oh, they can. They absolutely can pay. It's just who they've chosen to pay. We have the advanced data but another critical component is marketing data, and marketing investment, and marketing dollars spent. And I think that tells its own story as well because that can be a huge determining factor for how a book does, not just the buzz around acquisition but performance in the marketplace.
Kilby: And I love what you're saying about marketing dollars spent because that's where I was also going to go because there's also this. Okay, well, we have, you know, our black authors who may not be succeeding. Well, how much are you spending on those black authors compared to other authors? And the other thing that happens in the industry is, you know, you get black authors who are dropped from publishers because their sales aren't that good or their sales are not as strong as the publishers want them to be. And many times, that's blamed on the fact that like "Oh, we just can't sell these books with these black characters. You know, the marketplace isn't as interested in that." And then sometimes, you have this double standard where other authors who may be doing as poorly in sales, don't have the, you know, the ethnic background of their characters blamed for the reason why they have bad sales. So these stories have really bad logic in terms of what's selling and why and what the readers want. You know, they're everywhere, as is what happens to people who are anomalies, who either can't get published or don't go traditionally published, and publish something that industry wouldn't publish and then the book does really well. So I have a book that I couldn't sell to any publisher that did really well.
Mary: I was gonna say you've done both. You've been hybrid published. You've been traditionally published. So I was going to say, did any of these experiences or any kind of career considerations lead you to make the decisions that you've made over the course of your publishing history?
Kilby: So as a marketer, I initially decided that I was going to self-publish because I felt confident enough of my own marketing that I thought, "Well, I don't want to leave money on the table by getting an agent and going with a publishing house. I just want all the money to go directly to me. I'll market my own books." And that turned out to be not as easy as I thought. One reason why was because I was writing erotic romance. And I didn't realize that it was very difficult to advertise erotic romance because it's flagged as over 18 content, and then you can't advertise it. And then you end up in advertising jail and it's bad. So that was a little bit of an unexpected bump. But, for other reasons, I later decided that I wanted to do more traditional publishing. Marketing takes a lot of time. I wanted to be [inaudible 00:43:23]. I wanted to be traditionally published. I found it very, very difficult to sell manuscripts despite the fact that I've won some of the most prestigious awards in my genre. I still have trouble selling manuscripts. And books that I ultimately self-publish, like I said, end up doing well.
Mary: And this is a frustration that I hear often from writers across the board, which is, you know, people within the industry, they say, "It's too niche. It's too niche," or whatever the objection is. And then it turns out that the book actually has a fine life on its own virtues.
Kilby: Which is another thing that causes me to question, you know, industry data that publishers are going on. Because publishers have a lot of authors who aren't selling that well and then they reject a lot of authors who go off to write, as we're saying, who go off to write books that really show that they're satisfying, and appetite is present in the marketplace that the publisher is not acknowledging.
Mary: That is one argument for independent publishing. I do think that a lot of writers have the experience that you did, which is where they find out that they're now marketers. You have a marketing background and you still found it to be a little bit daunting to get out there with your work. Some people, whose interest is solely in the writing, they really have a rude awakening when it comes to them now having to market their independently published work. But where I think independent publishing makes a lot of sense is this idea of really connecting with a more specific audience, and, I think, a more granular audience than a lot of traditional publishers are willing to entertain or acknowledge that it's even there or that it exists. I've heard a lot of stories like yours, where books have just connected, and I think the other catch-22 that has all kinds of implications for diverse writers, especially, is this idea of sales numbers. You know, when you're first trying to publish, you're told, "Well, we don't have any data on you. You know, we don't know if this is going to go well and so, we're hesitant to make an acquisition." Well, once you've been published once or more, then it's like, "Well, we have sales numbers and we're not impressed, so we don't know if we can continue betting on you." It's a very tough environment in the traditional industry.
Kilby: Yeah, it is. It's a really tough environment and I think it's a tough environment for everybody, I mean, even for indie authors. I was recently at a conference and we were talking about how, if you want to reach a certain level as an indie, at this point in time, you practically need an investor just to cover all of the costs that you would have to do on marketing just to get those sales because, you know, you can absolutely be profitable but you still have to build that reader base to some extent, unless you're willing to wait years for it to happen. It's very difficult to reach a certain level without a real marketing budget.
Mary: I follow the indie market quite a bit because a lot of my clients in the editorial space, they are aiming for independent publishing. And so, we have these people like Mark Dawson who teaches self-publishing classes and ads classes, and you're right. Until you have a mailing list that you can really capitalize on, you're running lead generation ads and it just looks like a giant money pit that you're digging underneath yourself. But if somebody doesn't have any wiggle room for an advertising budget, especially when they're getting started and they're just negative on their income for a project, I think, you're right. The indie industry has gotten so competitive that you really have to treat it like a business, and if you have no startup capital, then there are a lot of people who can outspend you on ads.
Kilby: That's right. That's exactly right.
Mary: So as we sort of get toward the tail end of our discussion here, is there anything that you're gonna be doing with your next couple of projects that specifically addresses or doesn't address some of these issues that we've, sort of, talked about here, whether it's writing about social justice in a nuanced way or any moves that you're gonna make, career-wise, in terms of the indie versus traditional? I mean, what's, kind of, next on your agenda insofar as who you are as a writer, what you like to write about, what you see going on in society, and are those gonna come together?
Kilby: Yeah, I mean, I think that something that's true of most of my books that I'm writing right now is that they're a lot more, like, I wouldn't say that they're about social justice, most of them, but they're a lot more candid about what it feels like to live in America right now as a black person. I'm just finishing a book right now that is about a black park ranger who works in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and she falls in love with a federal fire marshal who is from there and who loves the area. And there are things that she loves about the park. But there's a moment in the book where they want to be together and she's like "I really don't know if I can live in Tennessee." He's originally from California and she wants to be with him. But she has this moment where she's like "I love you and I'm not raising our future mixed-race kids in Tennessee." Like, if you want to live with me, if you want to be with me, like, we need to move back to California. So that's just one of those moments where it's not about social justice, it's not about race, but my character has a moment where she's like "I can't live in Tennessee." Yeah? And that's a very real moment.
Mary: I'm a Californian myself, you know, and I lost that. I am in Minnesota by marriage. But that seems like, not only is it relatable to any couple, you know, the things that we will and will not do for a relationship but there's definitely an overlay of who she is, the society directly around her, and what she's experiencing as part of being a modern woman.
Kilby: Right. And that conversation wouldn't be happening if my character weren't black. It wouldn't be like...and there's literally a scene where she's like, " We cannot raise our mixed-race kids here. We can't."
Mary: What can we do as an industry, as readers, as consumers, to try and get at some of the issues that we've identified today in terms of virtue signalling and just being real, honest, and consistent supporters of black writers, writers of color, books by and about people of color? What can we do, instead of reading the same, you know, the same 20 books that you said? You know, that's certainly a good start. What else?
Kilby: I think we need to be conscious of those pendulum swings. I think we need to not live in those extremes and we need to do a lot more about recognizing...I think we need to see this as a spectrum, right. So let's go across that entire spectrum. I think it would be huge if the mainstream media dug a little bit deeper. You know, this week I saw, you know, you get this list of books, you know, I saw lists on like Hopper magazine and I saw lists in Entertainment Weekly and I saw lists in all of these super huge publications. How can the editorial world be more accountable for not listing the same names every time and going to the same books? I mean, like, I can't tell you how many times I've seen, you know, Ta-Nehisi Coates on a list, you know, over the past two weeks. Ta-Nehisi Coates's books are amazing and they're not the only ones. And, of course, you know, his books are not fiction and they're decidedly about race but there are stories everywhere, and I think we need to really, really, like, get that down to our bones.
Mary: I think that's phenomenal advice for everyone to keep in mind not just now. I mean, people are going to find this interview, not just in June 2020 when it is, you know, big national news what's happening, because for many, many people, this is daily life. And this is the work of their life to have their voices heard. And it's not just this moment in popular culture. It's not a hashtag. It's not just a social media Blackout Day. So I think that being very, very conscious of what we consume, what we champion would be a really good step for anybody out there looking to be an ally, to dig a little bit deeper than those same names that are circulating on Instagram post after Instagram post.
Kilby: Right. And not only that, those same authors can only write so many books, right. So, like, if we're only focusing on those, you know, 10 to 20 authors, you know, depending on your genre, then chances are you're gonna read through those authors pretty quickly, right. So there's plenty of fish in the sea and I think that's, you know, to use a romance analogy and it's totally doable for us, you know, in the age of Google to just go deeper.
Mary: I love that. I love everything that you've shared. I'm really excited, actually, to read your sommelier book. My husband is a chef. I'm actually a certified sommelier and so, I think that sounds fascinating.
Kilby: Well, if only somebody would buy it. If somebody would buy it, it would be published, right? But someone's got to buy it.
Mary: Do you think that you're gonna independently publish it if it gets no takers here?
Kilby: You know, this one, I've been holding on to, because this is one that I actually think, I think it's really important. It's so allegorical and the family feud is, like, such a direct parallel to race relations in this country that I have held off on self-publishing it because I think it needs, probably a bigger audience than I can give it and right now, I'm heavier on romance than I am on women's fiction. And this is definitely a women's fiction.
Mary: Anybody very, very serious and committed to broadcasting a voice of color in any spectrum, this is a hot property that I would love to point you towards it, by my wonderful guest, Kilby Blades. Thank you again for your time and just the wealth of food for thought that you've served up.
Kilby: Thank you so much for having me and for dedicating time to this topic. I really appreciate it.
Mary: My pleasure. And to everyone listening out there, here is to a good story.
Thank you so much for joining us for the "Good Story Podcast". My name is Mary Kole. The "Good Story Podcast" is made possible by my team, Abby Pickus, Amy Holland, Amy Wilson, Jen Petro-Roy, Jenna Van Rooy, Kristen Overman, Paige Polzin, and audio and video wizardry from Steve Reiss. You can find us online at goodstorycompany.com, goodstorypodcast.com. I'm at marykole.com. And also, find your writing partner at critcollective.com. And here is to a good story.