Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello authors. I'm Joanne Morell, children's and young adult fiction writer and author of Short Nonfiction for Authors. Thanks for joining me for the Hybrid Author podcast, sharing interviews from industry professionals to help you forge a career as a hybrid author, both independently and traditionally publishing your book. You can get the show notes for each episode and sign up for your free author pass over at the Hybrid Author website to discover your writing process, get tips on how to publish productively and get comfortable promoting your books at www.hybridauthor.com au. Let's crack on with the episode.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Hello authors.
I hope you're all keeping well in whatever part of the world you reside and listen to. The podcast in today's interview is with Larraken House publishers James Layton and Danny V and we are chatting about hybrid business models, submissions, picture book rhyming do's and Don'ts. Danny and James share their tips for authors looking to publish with Larriken House plans for the future and so, so much more.
So in my author adventure this week, I attended the self publishing conference 2023 Online over last weekend and that has been the first conference I've ever attended online and it's also been my first self publishing conference. So it was put together by the lovely members of Ally, which is the alliance of Independent Authors, and most of them were based in Britain. So the timing of it, it actually worked out quite well for us. In Australia, there was a couple of Australian authors and Kiwis and they had like an online forum chat thing that was taking place, a lot of us listeners, so everyone was sort of tuning in and out on their time zone as well. So for us in Australia, it kicked off at like 04:00 in the Saturday afternoon and it pretty much had a session on every single hour all through till midnight and then all through Sunday morning and all till the rest of the day. So I watched some I didn't watch, obviously every single one and I was just blown away. There were so many amazing authors that I have. Some of them I knew, some of them I didn't know, and just out there really earning a good living, making a career out of publishing the books and the genres and the things that they want and sharing just a wealth of knowledge and tips, honestly. I wrote down a few, so I hope to feature them on the podcast sometime soon because you could definitely benefit from hearing what they've got to say as well as getting stuck into some good books. I'm going to share some of the notes that I've written down and I'm literally sharing them from my notebook so you might hear me shuffle about turning the page. I thought I'll just read straight from the book rather than typing them all out. So, yeah, that's what the background noise will be if you can hear that. So one of the first sessions I attended was called how to Cultivate a Success Mindset with Amazon KDP. And that was run by Darren Hardy, also alongside Peter Gibbons, who's a hybrid author, and Hannah Lin. Again, hybrid author. Yeah, I think. And they were both fantastic speakers. So a couple of the tips that I had taken from there was ultimately, readers decide the success of indie publishing. It's the readers, obviously, who buy the books, setting up measures of success, pre orders, an email list on point. This is the worst about trying to read my writing.
They were talking about launch success, balance, mental health, family, career, not to burn out. Learn your trade through indie publishing. They were saying. Even though they publish with traditional houses, for them, they felt they had a step up when they were going down that route because they knew the publishing industry from independently publishing their own work. And you can go into traditional publishing with expectations, was something that they had said. Peter Gibbons, he made note about getting the metadata right for your book. The Blurb. They all helped with marketing. Take time to obviously learn that. Don't give up, keep trying new things. That's the success mindset. It's a learning experience. I wrote down something that I thought was great that Hannah said, I've put too many hours in this to give up, too many late nights to give up. I'm just not going to give up. You never succeed if you stop. So I like that she said that. And she was a lovely speaker, very smiley. And Peter had mentioned that he always has a playlist to his books, which he kind of plays the music and that eases him into his writing. He says he doesn't get bogged down by word count. If he's sort of stuck, he'll read, he'll walk, he'll do some admin, all of that stuff is not wasted. So just to feel not defeated that you haven't pumped out a big 2000, 2000 word day or something like that. Because as you know, as writers, some days are really productive, others not so much. It can be trudging through sludge. I've had a couple of those this week before I continue on as well. I'll just let you know that the conference was based around Success Mindset was all a lot of Mindset sessions, which was great. The different angles that they took from them as well was really clever. And they also just said, not all work has to be published. It's a good exercise to write in different genres. Don't let negativity bury you down. Believe in yourself and fuel that as well. Take ten minutes a day to actually believe in yourself, whether that be affirmations or just different things. So one of the other sessions I listened in was called Leveling Up Your Author Mindset with Michael Laurent, and he's got 80 plus books. I looked at some of these books and wow. And he set out his session sort of the three spheres of influence your life. Learn how to be yourself online, harness the power of having fun and make friends with failure and opportunity. So you got your personal life, your writing life, your work life. It puts fears in harmony to equal productivity. And he just talked about as well authenticity for selling online and being yourself. Basically, if you're someone different online, when people meet you in real life, they're going to be a bit confused. If you're not authentic, you're not who you are.
[00:06:22] Speaker C: And he just says, don't do things.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: That you don't enjoy.
Be authentic. Do the things that you love. Have fun. It says readers can sense when you are comfortable in your own skin writing your manuscripts. And then a question that he posed, which I really liked, was would you buy books from a writer who hates the books they write? And Michael says failure and opportunity are identical twins. Failure is more common than success. But failure is a better teacher. And with failure he says ask yourself, what can I be grateful for? What did I learn? What couldn't I have anticipated? And he just had lots of really good tips as well. Another session was mastering a crowdfunded success mindset. Unfortunately, I didn't write the guys names down that done this one and it was mainly about advice to authors about Kickstarter early beginnings. And I must got a bit distracted there because I didn't write down as much for that one. I'll have to go back and rewatch it, which was one of the perks of being a member that you could have. I've recently joined in the last few months and I signed up for that conference and pretty much got the six month access for free because I was a member, a full paid member. Such value that they offer as an organization, I'm telling you, if you're interested in self publishing and another one was Pen to Prosperity, Money Mindset, Manifestation and Management work on Mindset, map out Success Path. And then it just says that 99% of authors won't make a living off a single book, which I think most of us know I'm only two books in. I'm not making obviously a full time wage of them. And they have that conference as well that they talk about. If you are into self publishing, if you listen to the other self publishing podcasts or there is conference that a lot of them attend, apparently it's one of the biggest self publishing conferences of the year. I think it's called 20 Books to they have it in Las Vegas, so that would be on my list. But you've got to have 20 books to reach 50K.
[00:08:11] Speaker D: That's a lot.
[00:08:12] Speaker B: And some of these, like I just said that Michael Laurent had 80 books. Steph Green, who writes under Steph Holmes, 32 books. She spoke about how her 33rd book hit the big time and if she had stopped before then, she would never have got to the success that she is now. So they'd also said six figure authors have about 28 books or more, 22 books average about sixty k. You have to believe to achieve, publish more books, have a plan, work plan, write, you get there law of Attraction and Authorship and then there was just a list of limiting beliefs. And I'm very well versed in limiting beliefs. My book Author Fears and how to Overcome Them has a lot of these in them. Fear of success, fear of failure, fear of rejection. These are all things impostor syndrome. The perfectionist that writers can go through that actually stops them. It's just a limiting belief in their authorship. Career mindset matters. Unlocking indie author success with Ingram Spark. There was another one developing a global mindset, and that was with Morgana Best, Anna Featherstone. Oh, I forget the other lady's name. But then there was also Steph Green. They were all fantastic New Zealand authors, Australian authors, just great. They had a really good session. Take the things that have worked and they were talking about translations. Take the things that have worked in English and do them for translations. Some of them have that Steph Green has steph Holmes has a translation page on our website and they talked know, creating an experience for the reader. So one of them had a book about like a bookshop or something, so when someone had purchased it, she has stickers and things made up that when they receive the book through the post it's like they're receiving it direct from that bookshop, fictional bookshop in one of her books. I mean, it's about creating a unique experience for the reader. And then, of course, I attended mindset mistakes. What do indie authors do wrong with Joanna Penn and Orna Ross? And that was a really great session as always with those two. And again I will write down the names of the authors for these sessions.
Impatience, unrealistic expectations, authors fear to run the show, reluctance to invest in themselves with money, resistance to feedback.
[00:10:28] Speaker C: There was so much.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: All I have to say is that it's well worth going to these online conferences. Really, really worth it. I got so much out of it and I was really inspired. I felt like I needed an injection of sort of some sort of teachings and stuff like that. It's been a while. I think the last one was a few months back with Annie Louise and I always get so much out of workshops and obviously conferences and all these types of sessions and I love to learn.
So this week's episode is sponsored by Plotter, the tool to help you outline and organize your books. And I continuously check in with Plotter while I'm still working on this women's fiction because I have plotted it through Plotter and so I bring that up at the same time I bring Scrivener up what's great about Plotter as well is that you can create a story bible. So if you can't remember the name of a restaurant scene or where that restaurant had actually been placed, then rather than going through, especially with the women's fiction, my book's going to be around a 78 to 80,000 word mark. Rather than having to trail back through notes and index cards, you can actually track your characters and places in plotter. It's all easily laid out visually. You can organize the characters and the places, link the characters and the places to the scenes and create custom attributes to track specific details like special powers or geographical trivia. It's just such a well oiled machine, pretty much. It's great. And if you haven't checked it out yet, please do so over at WW. Plotter.com that's plotr and you can see for yourself. I think they do free trials as well.
[00:12:13] Speaker C: Danny V is a podcaster of the popular literary podcast Words and Nerds. She works in publicity and acquisitions at Lariken House and is also an author of picture books which include My Extraordinary Mum and My Epic dad series. James Layton is the Larry King of Lariken House, running two successful businesses. He is unwavering in his commitment in creating edgy, wacky quirky books that push boundaries. You'll find James inside a zoom screen, making yet another spreadsheet, meticulously, sorting out his warehouse or trying not to get cancelled at literary events. Welcome to the hybrid author podcast, James and Danny.
[00:12:52] Speaker E: Hi. Nice intro.
I'm trying not to get canceled here.
[00:12:58] Speaker D: I wonder who wrote that intro? It's just so on point.
[00:13:02] Speaker C: It was very good. Well, thank you both for joining us today. And obviously from the BIOS, we can tell where you're at now in your careers. But can you tell us how you both kind of ventured over to the dark side in the beginning? The publishing industry?
[00:13:16] Speaker E: The dark side.
[00:13:17] Speaker D: The dark side.
[00:13:18] Speaker E: I'll go first. I've spent my entire 30 OD year career as a bookseller and probably five years ago one of my staff members asked me if I'd considered publishing and I'm like, I haven't, but how hard can it be? So we thought we'd give it a go. It turns out it is hard and very different to bookselling. It's a very different sort of journey, a lot more creative. I've really enjoyed the experience of learning how to publish. Yeah, it's been really good so far for me.
[00:13:45] Speaker D: A lot different. I was English teacher for many, many years, so always sort of immersed in love of books and literature, et cetera. And then the podcast, I started that in 2017 as another extension of my love of reading. And then I've always wanted to be an author, but after speaking to so many incredible people, I was kind of like, what have I got to contribute? But interviewed James on my podcast Words and Nerds and I just thought, yep, Lara can have that exact right sort of vibe. And brand that I'm looking for. And so I submitted, got signed, and then I just started being really pushy and saying, so, James, do you go to festival? So, James, do you do this, do this? And he's like, Just do whatever you want.
So I have and I did, and I keep doing that. Now we're right in the guts of publishing. So it's kind of an accidental happy pushy. Oh, that's great.
[00:14:34] Speaker C: Well, it seems like it's working very well for you guys. We'll just start by james, over to you. Just a question here. So you have two businesses, the school business, which was learning discoveries, and then obviously starting Larryken House, the publishing company. So bringing these two together, it says on your website you push your own published titles as well as the ones that you source from the best publishers in the world. Can you tell us what was the thinking behind know, merging these two together and how have they sort of helped one another or set you apart in the business from other publishing companies and industry players?
[00:15:11] Speaker E: So, for 20 OD years, I've been doing variety picture book packs. So what it is, is I'll curate 40 picture books, put them in a box, we ring every school, we try to ring every school, preschool and childcare center in Australia once a year, I've got a team of six that do that, and we'll offer to send them our curated box. We do it twice a year. So I'm working with 80 picture books a year. So we'll send that box out. If the school buys the whole box, they get a really good price. If they buy less, they can pay more per book, but just keep what they want and send back what they don't want and we've become really well known for it. The curation is good. And part of my curating process is I was buying for or have still do I buy a lot of English published picture books. I think the English are the best in the world at children's publishing. They're funny, their picture books are quirky. And so I was getting asked by some of the Australian schools what Australian content we had in our picture book packs, which back wind the clock back five years, was zero. And when I started to look at Australian picture books, they were all so serious. Everything was meaningful, worthy improvement, moralistic books even didactic. I guess there's a really good market for that, but it wasn't on brand for what I was doing. My philosophy is reading needs to be fun for kids. If it's not fun at picture book age, I think they disconnect from the neurologically I think they disconnect reading and fun. And as soon as digital comes in, they pick up that first device. I think reading can be lost to them forever. So I think it's a serious issue that how do we get kids to make that neurological decision? Reading is a fun pastime or a pleasurable pastime at a very early age. It's too late. By the time they get up to the Treehouse series, I think they've already decided what reading is to them. That's when I'd made the decision to publish more like the English. Let's go funny, let's go quirky. Let's not always have message and meaning in the books. What about stories that are fun for fun's sake? And most of what we've published is that so that's how that came into being. And then those books. So I source 80 picture books a year for my school packs. We started publishing 20 books a year. So 25% of my content was now Australian. I've already got a really good market in the schools for what I publish, so half of what I print goes into my school pack. So my school's business is my publishing business's biggest customer. We were called Learning Discovery for 20 years, and the publishing imprint was called Larrakin House. And it just made sense after only a few months to merge, call the whole thing Laricon House because we just feel the word Laricon was so much better of a better fit for us and a better brand for us. So we got rid of the name Learning Discovery, which actually never meant anything. It's a meaningless sentence, probably not to.
[00:17:53] Speaker C: The Education Department, but.
[00:17:58] Speaker E: And that's it's all now Larrakin House. We're not publishing as many picture books at the moment, but yeah, our book packs and now our book packs into our schools business. We've now gone well beyond picture books. We only ever had one variety pack. Now we have ten. We do novels, manga, big books, board books, nonfiction, fiction, everything you can imagine. So, yeah, it's expanded quite a lot just in the last five years. I think we've tripled in size in the last five years.
[00:18:25] Speaker D: The reason we're publishing less picture books because we've expanded into graphic novels, middle grade junior fiction, and recently announced in books and publishing an adult fiction novel as well. So we're not publishing less. We're publishing less picture books to fit in all the other genres as well. Yeah.
[00:18:41] Speaker C: And is that because you're seeing a need for this, like a gap in the market, or you just want to expand the brand to have more genres?
[00:18:48] Speaker E: We're finding the right voices in those genres. So a lot of it, what we decide to publish comes down to the voice of the manuscript. And if it's got that quirky Larican voice, it doesn't actually have to be a humorous story. It just has to have the right voice. And so as we've become better known, we've had more established authors submit manuscripts to us. And they're not all picture books. We've had a lot of junior fiction, graphic novel manuscripts submitted to us. So we've decided to put some particular authors their voice is really on brand, so we'll publish whatever genre they give us. So John Larkin is a good example. He wrote us a middle grade story. I read one chapter and signed it, and then he had an idea for the Bogan Book Club and I signed it just on the idea of the Bogan.
[00:19:33] Speaker D: Yeah, that's good.
[00:19:36] Speaker E: I already know. John's Voice And then he wrote the first couple of chapters. I laughed my ass off. He's just the right voice. He can write anything he wants for us, you know what I mean? Because he's got the right so and we're in the romance business.
[00:19:48] Speaker C: Yeah. Do you guys headhunt authors as well? If you're saying that you know the voices of the industry and stuff, and you think, oh, yeah, they'd be a.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: Great fit, do you actually reach out.
[00:19:55] Speaker C: As well and say, have you got anything for us?
[00:19:58] Speaker D: Yeah, that's been a large part of my job. And again, I just made that roll up for myself.
I sort of said to James, I said, we have opened the door to a lot of debut authors and we will continue to do that if the manuscript is right. I said, But I think to go into the next sort of sphere of publishing, we really need to capture those voices who are well known, as well well known, not only with our department stores, but with schools and with readers. So we need a real combination of that. And as you all know, as a podcaster, you form these beautiful relationships, because I feel like podcasting is a really intimate form of speaking to people. I don't know, it's better than the phone. It's kind of an intimate form. I don't know why, but it is, because I know if you have the same experiences, people just give me all their secrets and then they'll email me and say, please don't put that out in public. I didn't actually want to tell everyone that. So I know a lot of people. And I would talk to James and say, oh, I think this person's backlist from other publishers or whatever is really good for our voice. And then we'd introduce each other. And now we've all become friends with particularly so many kidlit authors in Melbourne. And some of them know no interest in being published. It's just a friendship. But some have really come with really great manuscripts and so I think Adrian Beck was one of the first. Adam Wallace, christy Byrne. John Larkin's been a friend of mine for a really long time, and sometimes they don't all work out. We've had people know haven't worked out, and that for whatever reason, various reasons, and that's know, it's not a personal know, james runs a business and these books have to go into profit.
They have to be on brand for us. And I think James touched on that before, that brand is so much more important to us than what genre we're signing. I think because we're a small publisher, we've really had to differentiate ourselves amongst other publishers and we've done that through voice and through brand. And so whether it's a picture book or an adult novel, I don't think it matters and I think James thinks it matters. It's just all about the voice and the kind of art that we want to bring into the world. And I think as James touched on before, humor and comedy are really undermined with kids. And I'm a mother and I was a teacher for a very long time and yeah, learning books are really important, but also fun is important. Escapism is important. My daughter has anxiety and reading her fun books that take her out of her headspace are going to be much more valuable than talking to her about climate change in that moment. So I think they're actually just as important and I think with the increasing statistics of mental health with our children, I think they're going to be increasingly more important. So we don't want to undermine that. I really have a bad taste in my mouth and books are referred to as Chick lid or Aeroplane trash or whatever. I really hate that because I think that everything is valid and sometimes we need different things at different times. I'll often be right at reading some contemporary literature with a kids book with a classic thrown in because it just depends on what mood you're in.
[00:22:49] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:22:50] Speaker D: I don't even know if I answered that question.
[00:22:55] Speaker C: No, it's all really yes, we do.
[00:22:58] Speaker D: Headhunt a lot.
[00:23:01] Speaker C: But no, well said there. And even as a parent and I still read picture books to my like eight, and the eleven year olds cut me off now, but because they are sort of reluctant readers but to read.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: A fun book as well, they absolutely love that. Yeah, for sure.
[00:23:18] Speaker E: Laughing we get a lot of intel out of the school market because we're talking, we're making close. My team make close to 1000 calls a week into the education market. We don't get onto everybody because that's getting harder, but we get a lot of intel and the amount of reluctant readers is growing exponentially every year. And I think a lot of people that in a lot of Australian publishing, they think that educators are the biggest buyers of picture books. For instance, I'd say maybe 60% of all picture books end up with primary school educators. So for us it's important to get that educator on board. But educators aren't just buying books for curriculum links and lesson plans and conversations, they've all got reluctant readers in their school and they do buy nonsensical fun books for those reluctant readers. And I've been doing that for 20 years with a lot of the UK picture books. I've been bringing in a lot of the stuff I've been selling in my variety packs for years. They're not serious didactic books, they're fun. I already know educators buy that stuff.
[00:24:14] Speaker D: But it's not saying that we don't have a message either because my Shadow is Pink and purple. Dash Hound's Book by Carla Fitzgerald. My extraordinary mum. They all have messages, but not without the fun. So we're never going to do 90% message, zero fun. I know that maths didn't work out.
[00:24:31] Speaker C: I'm the wrong person asked.
[00:24:33] Speaker D: I know James math didn't work. He's our math man. Here. Spreadsheet.
[00:24:39] Speaker E: Lucky your English works.
[00:24:43] Speaker C: But even still, like you said, the message in the book could be life doesn't have to be too serious. You can absolutely have a laugh, which is, I think, really important from recent years.
[00:24:53] Speaker D: That's exactly right. And relationships for us are so key with who we want to work with. We don't want to work with someone who doesn't want to collaborate with us, who doesn't have that fun voice, who isn't going to come to the party and do their own publicity and go to schools and be excited about their book. So we have the luxury. We don't produce millions of books a year, so we have to be a really choosy. So it's not just about the voice, it's about the people that we're working with. I feel like we're creating this Larican tribe and we feel like it's a great time to be a Larrakin. So it has to be the right person, the right relationship. We can form with them as well. I think that's so important to us.
[00:25:25] Speaker C: It's amazing. So you mentioned before you're branching out.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: Into adult books as well.
[00:25:30] Speaker C: Is this the same sort of style, like, it's going to be funny, humorous type thing in those types of books?
[00:25:36] Speaker E: Yeah, I'd love to because I think the market's a little bit short on humor. I think there is some humorous stuff out there, but a lot of it's left to you, Kitty Flanagan's, and your Australian comedians that write funny stuff. But I'd love to see more humor in the adult market as well. I think I'd publish humor in any genre. If it's romance or crime, I mean, Danny's got a lot of contacts in the crime world, as in not in.
[00:25:59] Speaker D: The actual crime fiction.
[00:26:04] Speaker E: And a few in the crime world.
[00:26:05] Speaker D: Sounded like someone from underbelly.
[00:26:08] Speaker E: If you need someone taken care of, crime is inevitable for us at some point.
[00:26:15] Speaker D: But if it's got that, please say crime fiction.
[00:26:18] Speaker E: Crime fiction. Crime is already on the card.
Crime fiction is inevitable for us. And if it's got that quirky, humorous edge to the voice, then, yeah, I'm in.
[00:26:29] Speaker D: Okay.
[00:26:30] Speaker C: No, that's good.
[00:26:31] Speaker D: That's good to know.
[00:26:31] Speaker C: You've just recently had submissions open, so twice a year, 1 March and 1 September. Is that just for the children's fiction? Are you going to be opening submissions for adults and things like that? I don't know if I saw that.
[00:26:44] Speaker D: On your not at the moment. Only because I'm a bit of a one woman band in that way, and so I'll do all the culling I. Mean, James runs many businesses and he can't physically read all of them. So I do take the job very seriously because I know, as a writer myself, how much time you spend writing, and I do not want to miss out on another bestseller that I just chucked away. So I do take it very seriously and try to respect the creatives that we get. But I think with adult fiction, we're going to stick at the moment to agent submissions and or our relationships with authors that we already have. We're sort of trying to build a really good, supportive friendship group with authors in kind of every state. So every state we can go and have an awesome dinner at a pub and meet creatives, because even if they don't sign with us, it's not the point. It's just to have connections with creative people, which I think, how can you ever beat that? So not at the moment. I think just opening continually to children's lit at the moment. I don't know where that's going to go in the future, but it's still new to us and we're still finding our way. So I think the specific voice and the specific author for adult fiction is going to be really important as we embark on this journey, which is really exciting, but it's really different. You can imagine the editing process is a lot more intense, but then there's less illustration. So it's a whole sort of restructuring of not only our production, but our publicity. And so we're already sort of starting to think through all those things that might be different from what we've already done.
[00:28:06] Speaker C: Yeah, no, that's amazing. And with the submission windows that you've just had open, say, for the children's lit, how many submissions do you get and how many are you effectively looking to take on?
[00:28:15] Speaker D: Yeah, so it's usually about 300 ish. I mean, it ranges from depending on March. I think there was more in March than there were in September. We also get submissions, though, from established authors or authors who have already been published with Lariken House or people who have a manuscript assessment with us or agents. So we kind of tried to really filter them in the twice a year. But they do come in from other avenues as well. And it's never a number of we're going to take on one or three or ten. It's just about how good the manuscript and whether it fits our brand. And because I'm culling, I then have to justify the choices that I make to James. So we'll sit, we'll talk about I've got to say to him, I've culled this manuscript for you, because it's great characters, because it's really funny, it's an unpredictable ending, there's comedy and humor or I've got to justify my decision. So I'm looking for all of those things and then a great story, unfortunately, as we know, in publishing, isn't enough. It has to have something else as well. And so then we start looking at from a publicity perspective and a production perspective, how well can it be illustrated? Do we think the department stores are going to take it? Do you think booksells and educators are going to like it? How do we publicize this? So there's so much to it. So it is sad when we see great stories that aren't going to work for us. Like I said, we don't publish millions of books a year. We have to be very discerning. But it is about what really suits the brand and what's going to ensure that it works so we can continue being a publishing company.
[00:29:41] Speaker C: Yeah, because you guys are so well connected, obviously, with the schools and the education and things like that.
Have you got an ear to the ground on what they are looking for? Do they voice out, oh, we want more books on this, or is there chat happening like that within the industry?
[00:29:56] Speaker E: There's a lot of white noise in that space. Everybody wants everything. So we're looking at things that fit in with themes like Mother's Day, Father's Day, Christmas, Easter. They're things that you can sell every year. And they actually department stores take notice because they buy for a theme. But it's probably more the theme that is more important. At the moment, we're tossing up Halloween at the moment. Is Halloween big enough in this country to start publishing Halloween books? Because we know department stores like Big W and Big W sell 25% of all books sold in this country. So they're the biggest. They will do Halloween books. So that's a worthy consideration to say, okay, if we had the right story, that was Halloween. There's every chance that could get good traction, especially now. We know Halloween is getting bigger and we know that because the department stores are all over that stuff. So we use intel from everywhere. Yeah, we've always got an ear to the ground, but I'm a sucker for a good idea. When I heard the Bogan Book Club, I never would have thought of that in a million years. But as soon as John Larkin mentioned, I'm like, yeah, I mean, write it for me.
So we don't have a list of ideas, topics we want, but when we hear them, we know it straight like and there's quite a lot out there that I've said to authors, if you can write this, we'll sign. It's a great idea. And not all of those come through because they can't get written in the way that works. But there's a lot of I mean, it's like a fountain. Creativity just never stops. The good ideas just keep coming and coming. So I do a lot of danny and I both do a lot of manuscript assessment work, and that's my best creative outlet, because as you tell me your idea for a story, I'll add to that and 45 minutes later we've come up with a cracker of an idea. So that's been a really enjoyable process for me. The School of larrakins, in the assessment service, we started, because during COVID the submissions, the slush pile got hammered. Everyone decided to be a children's author. A lot of what was in the slush pile, the quality dropped off dramatically. So we started the School of larrakins and Manuscript Assessments, really just an opportunity to talk with people and teach people how to write on brand for us. So if you get our brand, if we can explain to you exactly what the voice we're looking for is, the types of things we want, the hooks, the characters, all of that, then you've got a much better chance of writing something that's going to get signed or get a second read or get taken to an acquisition meeting. So that's been our number one way in the last couple of years of getting things over the line, is to have that chat first, to really go over that and get you on up to speed with where we're at and what we want.
[00:32:37] Speaker D: But I think you've also heard from schools things like graphic novels, how kids can't stop reading them. So we've got two of those coming out next year, one by Christy Byrne and Rebel Challenger. So we thought it was important for women to own a bit more of space in the graphic novel as well. So we really deliberately chose two very talented, lovely, funny, amazing women to do that project. But we've got another one coming out with Joel Mccarrow, who is a performance poet. And when we went award winning, international award winning performance poet don't want to undersell you, Joel, who we met at Somerset, and I thought he was incredible. And then when he came into the green room and he delivered know poetry aloud and had everybody in the room sue, Whiting crying, I said to Jay, we have to have him, he's ours, I want him to be ours. I think I said that. So we've actually unofficially adopted Joel.
[00:33:29] Speaker C: No, that's amazing. No, that's really good. There good advice. And I just had to ask, is it because, Danny, you get, like you just said, the submission window, there are 300 submissions which is full on, and you're sifting through all those. Your submissions, you ask for the work. You don't seem to ask for synoptis or cover letters or anything like that, which always does not just cannot write those things. But is that the reason, just because you've got so much to go through already, you can tell what works and what doesn't from the work?
[00:33:59] Speaker D: Yes, and James has the best answer.
[00:34:03] Speaker E: That story is king.
[00:34:06] Speaker D: Well, yes.
[00:34:09] Speaker E: For me, story is king. So unless you're JK Rowling or someone that's going to sell, no matter what they publish, you have to have a good story. So we can't publish, your know, we can't publish your synopsis.
[00:34:22] Speaker D: That's where I was going.
[00:34:25] Speaker E: I was getting there. We can only publish good stories, so I'm happy to read a synopsis or a bio or whatever, but I'll do that after because if I don't like the story, what's the point of reading the bio? You know what I mean?
[00:34:35] Speaker D: Agreed.
[00:34:36] Speaker E: So story is king. It has to be a good story. Start with that. Like, I'm fussy with submissions in the sense that a lot of people go to great efforts to put in illustration notes, page numbers, all of that. I don't need any of that. Just give me a story that I can read really fast. I would try and read it at twice the pace you'd read it to a kid. Because in the speed of reading, especially if it's a rhyming story, I'm looking for rhythm. I'm looking for things. How well does this flow? I don't want to be stumbling over an illustration note says, oh, this is a frog.
So I like really clean reads.
[00:35:13] Speaker D: As do I, because we get so many and it's not really part of our core work. We've got so much to do in production and publicity and all the things that we do. So it's something that we just have to fit in. And so I just don't have the time. Like Jay said, what's the point in reading BIOS and whatever if the story is not right for us and we have to be discerning. And we have a very specific brand that probably might be stronger than other publishers know, have the capacity to publish more and publish a variety of things. But I think we've tried to stand out with our brand and we have to be really true to that brand and authentic to that brand.
[00:35:49] Speaker E: It sounds a bit like we're dismissive. We're not, because we're both paranoid about missing a great management. We do go through everything very thoroughly. It's a quick decision once we know what we're looking for. So it is a bit brutal, but we are thorough at the same time, so we're not dismissive. It's this fine balance of really knowing what we're looking for but getting through them at a pace that you can actually because no one's got time to read all day.
We've all got stuff to do.
[00:36:17] Speaker D: It's a big responsibility that I said I take seriously. I don't want to miss out on something amazing that should be part of our list. I always want to honor the people that have written and sent because I know that writing is a very personal thing. It's very hard to get feedback, and so you need to honor that as well. So I've always got these different hats on, the hat of the publisher and then the hat of the writer and then the hat of the publicist and try to balance all those things.
[00:36:39] Speaker C: Yeah, that's crazy. And you guys have already shared so much already. But do you have specific tips that you would give to authors for your next round of submissions.
[00:36:48] Speaker E: Yeah, I think one of my biggest tips is rather than if you've written a manuscript you want to submit, rather than treat it like a shotgun and send it to 50 publishers, pick two or three, but stalk them out really well. Go and read the last if you read the last 20 books we published, you'll get our brand. It's in there. I can say we're looking for edgy, quirky, humorous stories that push boundaries and challenge stereotypes, but that's not as good as you reading the last 20 books we published, because the magic of what we love is in those books. So if you study us, stalk us, do our courses, you've got so much of a better chance of getting published by us because you're writing on brand. And we know when someone's studied know we can see it in their writing that they've got what we're looking for. And that doesn't matter if you want to be published by a firm press or walker or whoever, do the same with them, because if you read the last 20 children's books affirm press published, you'll get their brand. It's in there. It's in every publisher has their thing. So that's probably my biggest tip, is know who you're submitting to and why and write on brand for that particular publisher.
[00:37:57] Speaker D: I've got two. The first one is, please don't send me stereotypical characters. If there's a mum in a kitchen baking a cake and yelling at her kids, I'll delete it. I'm sorry. I think we're beyond that. I think we need more. I think we need to honor not only our mums, but our kids as well, to show them that the world is a diverse place and we need to honor that. We've seen enough stereotypes and I'm tired of them. James thinks I'm brutal in that area. Maybe I am.
[00:38:24] Speaker E: Repeat what she actually says.
[00:38:27] Speaker D: I will own that.
And I'm going back to the stalking. If you want to stalk someone, please make it be James, not me.
And I think the technical aspects for me, they need to be invisible. So if I'm looking at rhyme and I'm like, oh, the rhythm's out. That's a near rhyme, that isn't a rhyme. You've forced a rhyme. It takes me out of the story and I find it really hard to finish the manuscript, and so I probably won't. So I think my greatest advice is, as I read it and James reads it when it gets cold, to respect their writing, I think writers need to really respect the craft. So take the time, read it a million times, edit as much as you can if you're going to rhyme. And rhyme is tough, and it's tough to get signed as well. Please work on it. Near rhymes are not good enough. Forced rhymes are not good enough. The rhythm being out and wrong. If we're sifting through hundreds and hundreds of managers, it's not going to be good enough. So I think it goes both ways. You've got to really respect the craft and put everything you've got into it. It's not right for us. It might be right for someone else. And when I am reading hundreds, you can see when someone has put their heart and soul into it or if someone's written it over lunch. And I'm sure there are amazing stories written over lunch, but I'm trying to make a point here.
[00:39:46] Speaker E: It does feel like a lot of rhyming stories are first drafts in a manuscript assessment. I'll often take out Danny's, my epic dad, takes us camping, and I'll read it as fast as I can get the words out of my mouth, and the listener becomes aware fairly quickly that it's got perfect rhyme and rhythm. And then I'll say, listen, if your rhyme is not that good, it won't get published. You have to be that good. You can't have flawed rhyme because a lot of publishers won't touch rhyme, and there's a couple of reasons for that. And this is a good tip. Publishers don't like rhyming books because I can't take your rhyming story and sell it to the Korean publishers or the Spanish publishers or the Yugoslavian publishers or the Chinese because they can't make it rhyme in their own language, so they'll often pass on it. And foreign rights deals are a big part of publishing. So that's why a lot of publishers won't touch rhyme, because it really lessens their chances of getting territorial sales on it. So I often find myself encouraging writers, write it in prose. Just write the story in prose. It's a bigger market. It doesn't lend itself as well to pace and humor like rhyme does, but it's better for storytelling because the worst rhyme crimes we see in rhyme are people are using words in their story and objects and people and things in their story. And that thing is only there because it rhymed with the line before, not because that thing actually adds to the story. So it's almost rhyme can actually be the enemy of storytelling because you end up with a beautiful page of rhyming words and no story, because you got things in your story that have no reason to be there other than the fact that that word rhymed with the line above or whatever your sequence is. So I think rhyme is a lot harder than you think it is, especially when it comes to storytelling. And story is king. So rhyme is not king. Story is king. So if rhyme is affecting your storytelling, write it in prose. You got a better chance of getting published.
[00:41:44] Speaker C: So now that's really good tip, sue.
[00:41:46] Speaker D: Yeah, and I'd just like to say that the rhyme didn't come easy for me. I mean, thank you for your compliment, James, but it wasn't something that I wrote over lunch. I labored over those rhymes. I immersed myself and was obsessed with rhyme zone and with my trusty thesaurus, and I remember spending a ridiculous amount of time on some lines. I remember spending weeks on some of those lines, and I think that's okay because I got to a point where I was really happy with it, and the rhyme has been commented on a lot, but it's hard work. It doesn't happen accidentally. It doesn't happen easily. So I think if you're going to do rhyme, you need to commit to it, and you've got to understand that it is going to take you weeks and months and days to write a picture book, which you may not want that, but I think with rhyme, unless, I don't know, you're a genius. Maybe Julia Donaldson is. I'm not. You just have to work really hard at it.
[00:42:36] Speaker C: I feel a school of laricans coming on for rhyming picture books.
[00:42:40] Speaker D: What do you think? I'm going to say exactly that, though. Get your thesaurus out and get your rhymes done out and write down a bank of 35 words and work hard and spend weeks losing sleep over it. That is my school of Larry.
[00:42:56] Speaker C: It's really good tips there, though, because you don't really think about when the book is translated or anything or yeah, there's so much to it as well.
[00:43:03] Speaker D: And it does work like my Shadow is Pink and Purple have been translated all around the world. But that's a very special book. So it does happen. My think dad, James, actually told me to write it in prose, and I'm not funny in prose, so I came back and said, here's your manuscript in prose, except it's in rhyme, translated in Estonian, but it's harder. It is harder. Wow. Yeah.
[00:43:24] Speaker C: So maybe for the authors, if they're feeling it's coming out in rhyme, they could maybe try writing it in prose and just play around with it in different manners if you get your story.
[00:43:34] Speaker E: Arc right in prose, because I think you got to get your story arc right. The other little tip I find myself giving authors a lot is a lot of authors spend a lot of time because in a picture book, it's 400 words. We say 500, but we really mean 400. You don't have a lot of time for narrative build up. So a lot of picture books start off the grass was green, the sky was blue, just with narrative stuff. And so I often find myself saying to authors, what would your story look like if you started it in the middle? Because that's where you got to the action. Start there because that gives a good hook. And then just bring in any necessary backstory that you've lost by deleting the first half of your manuscript, and more often than not, it improves those manuscripts 100%.
[00:44:18] Speaker D: I agree. And I think I've just got one little small tip, if you don't mind, Joanne. I did this color coding thing because James has a different recollection of this, but it's burnt into my memory of when I read him epic dad, first of all, and he didn't laugh. I think he was like multitasking and creating another spreadsheet or something. And so I stopped. I'm like, okay, I'm going to stop here because you're not in fits of laughter. And so I went back and I color coded the manuscript in like a traffic light system. So I did green for narrative and orange for kind of Funny ish Silly, and red was hopefully my punchline. And so when I did that, I realized exactly what James just said. The first four stanzas were setting up that they were going camping. Oh my. I don't need four stanzas to tell the reader they're going camping. So I just gutted it and turned twelve lines into four. And then I made sure that every single stanza besides the first and the last is set up in the end, had a combination of the green, orange, red. So it's almost like writing a joke. It's almost like you have the setup of the joke and you have the punchline. And that means every spread has something either funny or hopefully funny or ridiculous on it. And then I read it again. James, who laughed, who then read it to his friend, who spilt hot tea on his laugh. And that's my most favorite.
[00:45:27] Speaker C: No, that is really good tips there. I've heard of color coding before, but I haven't ever thought about it and say like, from the rhyme perspective.
[00:45:34] Speaker D: Yeah, I think it just gives you another layer of editing because you'll write your story and you'll spend weeks, months, whatever, on it, and then you're like, what are words? I don't even know if this is good or it sucks, or it's somewhere in between. And so I think that color coding gives you another perspective and you go, oh, okay, you can look at it in a different way.
[00:45:53] Speaker E: Picture book stuff, like fiction. You don't have the word real estate to spend a lot of time on narratives.
And I would often say if you deleted this word, does it affect the story? If it doesn't affect the story, delete the word. Buy yourself another word.
[00:46:09] Speaker C: No. Those are some amazing tips there and you guys have shared so much. Thank you. And it sounds like the business is absolutely thriving going gangbusters and bogan book club, and I'm excited for the adult stuff as well. So, as a business as a whole, are you guys branching out into any other avenues or anything else exciting to come?
[00:46:29] Speaker E: The biggest one in the last three years for us is school book fairs. I had a school book fair business back in the late ninety s, and I sold it to Scholastic. I'm now doing it again. So for the last three years I've been doing school book fairs, which is like a scholastic fair. We turned the school library into a bookshop for a week and yeah, we've been doing 100 school book fairs a year for the last three years and that's growing and the popularity because of the feedback on our stock is next level good. So yeah, that's something where and again it gives us a market direct kids because the best intel in the market is what are kids buying? Because when kids buy books for themselves like they do at book fairs, it's very different to what parents buy for kids. So what kids want to read and what adults want kids to read are two very different things. So it's a very different type of intel and it's really good and it helps us know what to publish because we're publishing for kids, not adults, in that when it comes, we're going to grow that as much as we can in the next few years.
[00:47:31] Speaker C: Oh that's good to hear. Our school, my kids, just when they look at what's there, they just want the toys that's there there's not the books. They come back and I'm like, well no, you're not getting it.
[00:47:42] Speaker D: We need to wrap the books up.
[00:47:44] Speaker C: With the toy or send it with the toy. That's all they go for. And I'm just like, oh I think.
[00:47:50] Speaker D: For me I've been obsessed with festivals so I think festivals is work but it's like pretend work because I love networking with people and so it's like, look we're working but I think it's really important particularly with Somerset Story fest in getting our books in front of kids. And then we go to a festival where there's aspiring writers or other publishers and then I think it's really good to mix with other publishers. We learn from each other, get to talk to each other and then we get to meet aspiring writers, et cetera. So I think for me that's where I've really tried to expand that side of it. And Jay, you want to talk about author visits as well because that's I've.
[00:48:27] Speaker E: Been taking on book sales for authors. So a lot of authors get school visits, agencies like Booked Out or Lamont or other agencies out there but often they'll end up in a school and do it. They'll spend a whole day in a school and no one's there selling their book. So a lot of the authors I've already got relationship with I've organized to do their book sales for them. So it's all a cashless click and collect system where kids get a link beforehand, they can go online and order their book and then get it signed on the day and even after the event they can still buy books. So that's worked really well. We did about 50 of those events through August because everyone wants an author in August. So yeah, that's another point of expanse as well because I'm finding a lot of authors who earn a lot of their living by doing school visits. It's actually if you want to be a full time children's author. You have to do schools, and to have your books for sale is fantastic because every kid loves a signed book. Kids love to not only meet the author, they want to sign books. So, yeah, that's another space we're growing heavily into as well.
[00:49:25] Speaker C: Yeah, that's really clever. And I recently interviewed Kathy Tusker and Nat Amore about their presenting to kids course. And when she said it to me, and the two just didn't even connect know it's a business model, she's going into schools, but she's also there selling the books as well as presenting. So now that's a really clever avenue.
[00:49:44] Speaker E: I had Nat two weeks ago for a whole week and she's a beast.
[00:49:48] Speaker C: She was just in Perth. We were very lucky to go and meet her.
[00:49:52] Speaker E: I had her the week after Perth. She did Melbourne and she's a sales beast.
She can do 150 books in a day. Like, it's freaky. She's amazing and she gets it. She sells her own books. At the end of her talk, she'll promote, hey, come buy a book.
[00:50:10] Speaker D: And her presentations are just so engaging and so fun. So she draws those kids through fun, which is exactly our model.
[00:50:19] Speaker C: She's the next larikin.
[00:50:23] Speaker E: She had the kids laughing their asses off the whole. Yeah.
[00:50:26] Speaker D: But I think what works with Jay is that we've always had a really similar vision of what Lariken House wants to produce. I think we're actually the same person, just in different bodies. And we're workaholics who I don't know. With ADHD, that's how it works, that's how we do what we do. We'll be up till midnight sometimes looking at manuscripts or production or whatever. And it's not because we have to do it, it's because we want to do it. And we're really passionate about the work we do, so not everyone would want to do that 24 hours a day. But it's good that we love the work that we do and we think it's important and it's fun and that's how we've gotten to this point, I guess.
[00:51:08] Speaker C: Yeah. That's amazing. Well, it clearly comes through in everything you guys do, so thank you so much. Can you tell our listeners where they can discover both of you, your books, your authors and everything you do on and offline?
[00:51:19] Speaker E: Larrakenhouse.com Au is everything about Lariken is on our website. There's an authors section for aspiring authors which covers our schools and manuscript submissions, all of that. That's probably instagram's. The other. We do get a lot of traction on Insta, Facebook even to a degree.
[00:51:37] Speaker D: Yeah. And you find me on all social media. I actually really love social media. I'm not ashamed of it at all when people say less than your social media, I'm like, Nah, increase it more.
And obviously Words and Nerds podcast. We're at nearly a million plays.
[00:51:51] Speaker C: I think we'll get made by the.
[00:51:52] Speaker D: End of the year, so I'll be there most of. The time, creating a million episodes.
[00:51:57] Speaker C: Huge congrats to you. I know it's no mean fear. I'm pushing up to just 100 episodes and I'm like, wow, that's amazing. But you're like nearly 1600.
[00:52:08] Speaker D: 600. Yeah.
[00:52:09] Speaker C: Well, thank you so much, guys. That was incredible.
[00:52:12] Speaker D: Thank you. Thanks so much for having us.
[00:52:21] Speaker B: So there you have it folks, the Larrakin publishing team there sharing some ultra amazing tips to help you on your publishing author adventure. Next time on The Hybrid Author Podcast We have returning guest Sarah Epstein and she's chatting about a year in the life of an indie author. If you listen to Sarah's episode, it was one of the really most popular ones that I've been on the podcast before and it was truly inspirational. And she had started off as a traditional publisher and stepped into being hybrid by going indie. And I caught up with her just to chat how the author adventure has been in this last year and what she's learned and different things. And it's always inspiring to chat to Sarah. I wish you well in your author adventure this next week. That's it from me. Bye for now. That's the end for now.
[00:53:05] Speaker A: Authors, I hope you are further forward in your author adventure after listening and I hope you'll listen next time, remember to head on over to the Hybrid author website at WW hybridauthor.com. Au to get your free author pass it's.
[00:53:19] Speaker C: Bye, Renee.
