Robert J. Sawyer joins us to talk about how the sci fi industry has changed over the years, and how to use themes to craft a story readers will connect with.
Robert J. Sawyer, lovingly dubbed Canada's Dean of Science Fiction by the Ottawa Citizen, joins us to talk about how the sci fi industry has changed over the years, and how to use themes to craft a story readers will connect with.
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Kevin Tumlinson [00:00:02]:
You just tuned into the hippest way to start and grow your indie author career. Learn the ins, the outs and all the all arounds of self publishing with the team from D2D and their industry influencing guests. You're listening to Self publishing insiders with Draft2Digital.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:00:27]:
Hello and welcome to Draft2Digital Live. Self publishing insiders. My name is Mark Leslie Lefebvre. I'm the director of Business development at Draft2Digital and in the virtual studios with me, but we're also in the same time zone is Robert J. Sawyer.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:00:41]:
Welcome. Rob. Hey Mark. Good to see you old friend.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:00:44]:
I love that Live long and prosper. I love talk about a true science fiction fan. So for for those who don't know who Rob is, Robert J. Sawyer was named the Dean of Canadian Science Fiction by the Ottawa Citizen. And you are from originally from Ottawa, Ontario, one of only eight writers in history and the only Canadian, as I understand it, to win all three of science fiction's top honours. Rob is a member of the Order of Canada, which is the highest honour given here in Canada, and the Order of Ontario, which is the highest order given by the province that we both live in. Rob is also one of the initial inductees into the kisfa, which we call it for sure, but Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Associations hall of Fame and according to a US trade journal, Locust, which I'm sure science fiction fans are familiar with, Rob is the author who is the author of 25 novels. I think it's 25 or are we 26?
Robert J. Sawyer [00:01:43]:
I finished the 26th, but it's not out yet.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:01:47]:
25 as of now, but 26 at the publisher is the number one all time worldwide leader in a number of award wins in science fiction and fantasy. Which is why I wanted to talk about theme. But more than all of these awesome accolades that Rob has is he's been a longtime friend and an incredible mentor, not only to me, but to thousands of writers. Rob, I'm so excited to have you here tonight.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:02:12]:
Well, thank you Mark. I'm delighted to be here.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:02:14]:
So let's get into this. So like you've won all of these awards and the topic of theme now this goes back to now. We're both judges of the Writers of the Future. Writers of The Future Volume 41 just came out. We have a fellow Canadian in there, but you have an article in there that kind of prompted me to want to talk to you about this because I listened to your talk that you gave to the writers in Hollywood and your article was called it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that theme. And that really ties into what we wanted to talk about today, right?
Robert J. Sawyer [00:02:47]:
Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, I'm a science fiction writer, but I think this actually is quite applicable broadly to a lot of writers in a lot of genres. Most creative writing teachers will tell you start with a character or maybe even start with a plot. And I'm not a fan of that process because what you're doing, if you start with simply a character, you're looking for a story. What do you do with this character? I have no idea. Is this character appropriate to the story you're going to tell? You have no idea because you've started, I think, at the wrong place. The same thing goes with starting with a plot. Plot is great.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:03:24]:
I mean, plot is, you know, the very definition of story is beginning, middle and end a plot. But you're not going to get people thinking about your story after they finished reading it. And it's when they're thinking about it afterwards that they tell other people, hey, I read this. You got to buy this. This was great. It's when they're thinking about it afterwards and they're again in a bookstore or shopping online where they think, I, you know, that guy, he. He's still in my head. I want something else by him.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:03:54]:
So I'm a huge advocate of starting with your theme of deciding what it is you want to say and literally writing it out for yourself in a sentence. And I find it actually very useful to have that sentence as a touchstone when you're going along. So, for instance, just here's the download of my latest novel over here. What's the theme of the download? I can tell you what the plot is, I can tell you the characters are. But the theme is that the people that the society, that our society judges us having the right stuff, astronauts, in the case of the story, and the people we judge as having the wrong stuff. Often people who've ended up in a life of crime and being incarcerated are the exact opposite judgments of what we should be making. That the people that we laud often are not praiseworthy, and the people we discard often are the most valuable people in the world. And that's what I wanted to say thematically.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:04:53]:
And then you come up with characters to let you explore that. And then actually, then you come up with a plot, and then you come up with characters that fit into that theme. But having something to say, a resonant statement, I think is what distinguishes fiction and literature. We all want to be successful fiction writers if you're not a nonfiction writer. But literature are the works that stick with us after you've read them, if you can. And here's my little litmus test. We'll get on to the questions very quickly. The litmus test is this.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:05:28]:
If I ask you what a book is about, and your only response is, well, it's about this guy, see? And then this thing happens. And if your only response is a plot synopsis, it's not a thematically driven work. If you ask what the book is about, it. And people say, well, it's about the fact that even today, but certainly in the Deep south in the past, an African American man could never get justice even if he's innocent. Right? That's To Kill a Mockingbird. Nobody says To Kill a Mockingbird. It's about these kids playing in the backyard. And then another kid shows up on the fence and he's visiting from next door, and he says, folks, call me Dill.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:06:08]:
And it goes on for. You don't give a plot synopsis talking about To Kill a Mockingbird. You. You don't give a plot synopsis talking about most great books. You give a thematic statement. And if you want to elevate your book. You mentioned all those awards. You want to elevate your book to the stratum where they get awards.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:06:26]:
I think you have to talk thematically in your fiction.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:06:29]:
Oh, that is fantastic. Now, we do have some specific questions that I will be raising very briefly, so thank you guys for asking them. Feel free to leave them in the comments. But I want to go back to this because, I mean, I. I think I got to a point after discovering you as a writer of just saying, Rob Sawyer is one of those writers. I'm just going to buy on site because I know I'm going to enjoy the stuff that he writes. I mean, I love the downloaded. I.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:06:52]:
I particularly enjoyed the fact that it was set in Waterloo, not necessarily.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:06:56]:
Where you are right now.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:06:58]:
Yeah, Waterloo, Ontario. So you. You mean to tell me that it was that theme that you started with before you even got to the whole concept? And. And then the title, obviously, the downloaded obviously came way after, I imagine. Right.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:07:12]:
So there's a high concept sometimes even before the theme. Because the downloaded was my COVID 19 book. And I think many authors had something that they did during the pandemic. And for me, it was my metaphoric response to the reality of COVID 19. The reality was that we had all started metaphorically living uploaded lives. We had stopped going physically out shopping. That's when the huge boom in E commerce began and we stopped going physically to see our friends. We would interact with them on Facebook or on Instagram or by Zoom or whatever and chat when it's so.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:07:53]:
But we knew it was going to come to an end. We knew that the COVID 19 crisis would end. It took a lot longer than it should have because of the stupidity of a lot of people in not dealing in a sensible way with this existential crisis. But we knew it would end and then we would have to literally or metaphorically download back into reality and start figuring out how to deal with each other face to face again. So that was the germ of the idea. But that's not enough to make an interesting book. What you need is. And what is the point? What point are you going to make? And the point is that when you get back into the nitty gritty of real life, it's not necessarily the celebrities, not necessarily the famous people who are going to dig in and actually pull us together when we need pulling together.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:08:39]:
It's the people often that we've said, oh, they're discarded. We've thrown them out of society, we've jailed them or marginalized them in any of a number of other ways. And there are a lot of marginalized characters in the downloaded too. And really they deserve a place at the table and a centrality in our, in our daily life. And that's. That was the process.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:09:00]:
Wow. I always find that so absolutely fascinating. It also lends so perfectly to the way that you promote your books because I've seen you on, I mean you've been on television programs and international shows and interviews and on stage. And whenever you talk about your book, you typically don't talk about the plot or any of the details. You, you, you do talk about the theme or the motivation or that inspiration or would you. Would you even.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:09:26]:
Not.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:09:26]:
Not even. It's not. It's way more than a log line, right?
Robert J. Sawyer [00:09:29]:
It really is. For me. What I want to do with my books is spark conversation. You know, there's a commercial category that you don't often see often reflected in the self publishing zeitgeist. And it's called book club fiction. It's those books from the traditional big five publishers that they think are going to be really popular with book discussion groups. I'm not talking about the old fashioned book club where Doubleday had the Book of the Month club where they. No, no.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:09:58]:
These are the discussion groups or readers groups that get together predominantly female. They're mostly women who are in book clubs. But I have spoken to many men only book clubs. I don't approve of any segregation. I think all things should be mixed. But there are lots of women book clubs, men book clubs. The books that people get into, book club fiction that are the ones where a whole group of people say let's all read this book, are the ones that are thematically rich. People say, yeah, I like the character, I like the plot, or I didn't like this, I didn't like that, or I wish the author hadn't, blah blah blah.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:10:32]:
But what they really end up sinking their teeth into is the subject matter of the book, what's it all about. And, and really they're not a lot of venues for self published authors getting into the promotional level where you know, people are going to be pushed as you know, Oprah's Book Club or Reese Witherspoon's Book club or that sort of thing. But that kind of book nonetheless gets the kind of word of mouth recommendations that I think a self published author needs. Certainly we all crave people to go and review our book point of sale, right? But they still have to come to the point of sale page to see all those reviews. And we're crossing our figures that some anonymous algorithm will put us there. But the best way of selling books, I say, listen, you know this Mark, you used to be a professional bookseller. I was for a short time too. In brick and mortar stores, I mean, is word of mouth.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:11:33]:
Somebody comes in, I want this book. Why do you want it? My friend said I would enjoy it. Right? Or you know, that kind of thing. And it's because it's got something to talk about. Great novels like Catch 22, great novels like One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, great novels like Fahrenheit 451 or as we call it here in Canada, Celsius 233, you know, 1984. The Handmaid's Tale. What's the Handmaid's Tale about? It's about men stealing control over women's lives. You say that, you don't say, well, it's about this woman whose name is of Fred.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:12:07]:
And it's like, oh, she's actually off red. And it's Bubba. You don't do that. You talk about the theme and people rally around those books. And I see it sometimes in science fiction, but not as often as I'd like to see it. There's a lot of mindless escapist action adventure, which is popcorn. And that may be Good. If you have a series that is popcorn, but you got a whole bunch of them, you can make a good living self publishing doing that.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:12:35]:
But if you were doing one offs, there's no compulsive desire to read the next one if you're last. Yeah, that was fun. Who else has got something fun? Maybe it's not Robert J. Sawyer or Mark Leslie Le Fay. Maybe it's this guy over here. You want something that makes people come back over and over to you as their favorite writer. And it may be for some writers that you've got a series that they're addicted to. And I'll say this, one of my favorite writers, Robert B.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:13:02]:
Parker, who created Spencer made into multiple versions in television. Spencer for Hire starring Bob Ulrich was the most famous version. I love Robert B. Parker, but I felt very little compulsion to read his Jesse Stone series or any of his other works or is Raymond Chandler faux collaborations. No, it turns out I'm not a fan of the author. This is the case of so many series writers. You're not actually a fan of this particular author. You're a fan of that series.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:13:36]:
Right.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:13:37]:
And the tricky thing, unless that's all you do is a series, is to make sure that your brand is something that makes people think. No, I'm a fan of Rob Sawyer and in my case the log line is I'm a fan of Rob Sawyer and because he makes me think and that works for me, that's made a. I made a career out of that.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:13:53]:
I love that. So you have, of the novels you've written, you do have a few trilogies.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:13:59]:
I do.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:14:01]:
And I mean, and so the downloaded, you know, spoiler alert. You are going to be writing a follow up to it because it was so successful. And I do want to talk a little bit about that business and the way you negotiated things with different publishers and the offer you got. But so the trilogy, so you've got the Wake Watch and Wonder, you have the Hominids trilogy and you have the Farseer trilogy.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:14:23]:
Three different trilogies. Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:14:24]:
Why were those trilogies instead? Is that because the ideas were just that much bigger that you.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:14:29]:
Oh, honestly, the first time I did trilogy and we call it sometimes in the business committing trilogy like it's a crime. Right. Because I'd written a novel called Farseer and sent it to my agent in New York, traditionally published back in the day, and he said, I love this, but you killed the main character at the end. I said, yeah, isn't that poignant? No, this should be a series and so my agent encouraged me to write a second one, and then I did a third one. But I'm not. I get bored easily. That's part of my problem, as, you know, as a reader and as a writer. As a reader, you, as a writer, have got to really hold my attention because I've got a million thoughts going on in my head, and you want me focusing on the ones that are on your page.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:15:16]:
You got to really keep me riveted. And as a writer, you know, I was a kind of a book a year guy when I. During my traditional publishing career, that meant I spent on a trilogy three years. And by the time of the third book, I was hating the work. I just didn't want to do it anymore. And so my subsequent two trilogies, in both cases, it was just. I had a giant story. And this is one of those publishing realities.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:15:44]:
In fantasy, a big brick of a book is commercially viable, 250,000 words, which is, you know, Brandon Sanderson, George R.R. martin. Big fat books are viable in science fiction. The publishers wanted smaller books, so 85,000 to 100,000 viable in science fiction. And I wanted to tell my big fat book. But because of the vicissitudes of traditional publishing, it ended up being three volumes for Hominids, Humans and Hybrids and Hominids won the Hugo Award. The sequel, Humans, was nominated for the Hugo and Wake Watch and Wonder, each volume of which separately won Canada's Aurora Award for best novel of the year. So they were all good books.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:16:33]:
I have no, you know, I may have not enjoyed the writing as it went on, but the readers enjoyed the experience of all three. But an ongoing series would have been anathema to me. It would have been a sentence. You are sentenced, Rob Sawyer, to explore this particular character in this particular world until you die. That would be, for me, not right. Whereas I have great friends who have made wonderful careers. I was great friends with Peter Robinson. I often, as you say, called the dean of Canadian science fiction.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:17:04]:
He was often called the dean of Canadian mystery. And Peter was famous for his Inspector Banks series of novels. That was his career. And we had about the same number of books at the point that Peter sadly passed away much too young. But his career was writing about Inspector Banks, and my career was all over the place. And I enjoyed my career. You know, I'm sure Peter enjoyed the riches of his career, but I think I enjoyed my career ultimately more. We were on a panel together, just the two of us actually, at the Banff center one year in Banff, Alberta, Canada, and He kept talking about Banks, Banks this, Banks that.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:17:46]:
And I said, peter, you've written over a dozen books about this guy. You're not on a first name basis with him yet. Alan is the first name of Banks. And he was kind of taken aback. Right. But I could not do that. I'm not that kind of writer. And it's to my detriment.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:18:03]:
As a self published author, there's no doubt that the single best route to self publishing success is an ongoing series where you feed that audience 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or even 6 times a year with a new book in that series, Prolific. And you have to be content to mine the same vein constantly for that particular route to success in self publishing.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:18:32]:
Well, let's talk about that because you talk about you being self published author, but you also talked about an agent. You talked about did contracts with publishers. When, at what point? And I think I'm setting you up because I think I know the answer. At what point Quantum Night did, did some of those things change for you?
Robert J. Sawyer [00:18:50]:
Yeah, so I. Quantum Night was my novel that came out in 2016 and very topical right now because it's about a psychopathic US President who decides to annex.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:19:00]:
Could never happen.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:19:02]:
Quantum Night, it was my last book for Penguin Random House Canada and for Ace science fiction in the United States. And I loved my editors in in both countries. Adrian Kerr in Canada, Jessica Wade in the United States. My agent and I thought this was a really prescient and important book. And we wanted particularly Ace, who had not been equaling the sales numbers per capita that Penguin had been getting for me in Canada to really give the book a push. And they did not. And I had the British rights to the book and the, the audiobook rights to the book initially. And I decided, okay, you know, I'd had a British publisher, I've had several British publishers, including HarperCollins UK and New English Library.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:19:51]:
We're not getting the push from North American publishers in this book about the annexing of Canada. Sure as hell not going to get it in the uk. So let's self publish it in the UK and see what happens there. Print in the UK was all self publishing originally and also ebooks in the uk and I had also managed to retain ebooks in North America, which is very hard to do. And the ebooks did get the numbers I wanted for that book. And you know, don't get me wrong, Quantum Knight was a, was a bestseller in Canada and so forth. But it pointed out to me that the traditional publishers who, let's Face it, no matter how important your book is to you, it's just one of that month's list of books for that publisher. And lo and behold, 30 days later they have next month's list of books.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:20:41]:
You're already forgotten your last month or two months or six months or two years ago. So I started putting a toehold into self publishing. My work with that book and with my next book after that, the Oppenheimer Alternative. I said no way am I giving to a big five. And I've been published by four of the big five in New York. No way am I going to let them have ebook or audiobook rights which are so lucrative these days. There we are, the, the Oppenheimer Alternative, lovely cover by Bibliophic Designs here in Canada. No way I was going to let them have those rights.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:21:17]:
Well, that meant for the big five, including Penguin and Ace, which I had long term relationships with. Well, we always get ebook rights. We always get. Now we started insisting on audiobook rights and I said, well, parting of the ways. And so I started doing self publishing for my ebooks and doing deals directly with Audible for my audiobooks, not through their, their self publishing arm, but actually royalties, advance against royalties. Books, big part.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:21:49]:
Yeah, not with apx, but with Audible.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:21:52]:
That's right. That's right. And doing, you know, actual deals with, you know, and in a competitive situation, getting good advances for my audiobook rights and somebody else bearing the production costs. But the ebooks are the sweetest plum in self publishing. And the, the big five, you know, they give you 25% of net proceeds on ebooks. Well, net proceeds are the 70% that's left after Amazon or Kobo or Barnes and Noble, through Nook or Apple or Google play, take a 30% skim off. So there's 70% left. Traditional publishing for the power of pushing the upload button.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:22:34]:
The publisher wants 3/4 of that 70%, leaving you with 1/4 of 70%, which is 25% of net. Or if you work out the math, 17, 17.5% of gross. Whereas if you self publish an ebook, yeah, you got to pay that same skim off the top 30%. But 70% comes to you. And so not only do you make more per copy, but we self publishers all know you have to price your ebooks low. 499us599 is what I do. Some other authors have different opinions about what the magic price point is. That's worked very well for me.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:23:11]:
Whereas when Quantum Knight was originally or any of my Ace titles were Originally in a hardcover at $25 US they would bring out an 1895 ebook. Nobody's going to pay 1895 for an e book when the self publishing marketplace is saturated with things at 299 and up. So they, they were asking for the lion's share and then also torpedoing the marketplace. So I now always do my deals with. I like having a traditional publisher for reasons of vanity of walking into a bookstore and and seeing my book on the shelf. And also because I really enjoy. In Canada we have a very vigorous literary festival circuit where you can be invited to Vancouver and to Montreal and to Ottawa and to Halifax and Toronto, Kitchener and so forth and do readings at literary festivals. But almost all of them still have this prejudice against self published authors.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:24:12]:
So having even a small press do the print edition has that benefit for me, Gets me into chapters, gets me into Barnes and Noble, Indigo here in Canada. But my, the, the real wealth for me has been in audiobooks and in ebooks these days, and particularly in audiobooks because Audible likes me a great deal. And they actually commissioned the downloaded initially and the sequel to the downloaded for a very large amount of money.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:24:42]:
And they commissioned that probably because of their experience knowing how well your previous audiobooks had done.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:24:48]:
That's right, absolutely. They certainly had looked at what I've been doing for them. And when they wanted to branch out into original production, Audible started very similarly to the way Netflix started. Netflix, back in the days when it only sent actual DVDs to the physical mail, was simply a distributor of other people's content. Now Netflix is one of the biggest production studios in the world and make most of their money off of their original productions. And the way they retain people when there's a huge number of streaming services you could go to, you could be on Paramount plus, you could be on Disney plus, but no, you're on Netflix. If you have one service, it's Netflix. And the reason is Netflix said, well, we'll invest so much into original content that those other services won't have.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:25:35]:
Yes, you can get any, you know, studio film, Hollywood studio film on most of the services will have, you know, Apple or we'll have, you know, all those films, but the original content we have the best, the highest quality and it's only on Netflix. So Audible looked at that and said we got to do that too. And they looked to see who their best performers were and said we'll commission new stuff that we'll have and nobody else will have. And when they approached me with that, I said, well, yes, but you're only an audiobook publisher. You can have the audio rights, but I got to have print. I gotta have ebooks back and forth. And ultimately they came to see the wisdom of my model and agreed to the contract that I wanted. And then I was able to exploit ebooks myself for the downloaded and the print, which I chose because of that particular desire of mine to still see it in a physical bookstore and to still be on the A list for the festival circuit.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:26:38]:
I went with a very small press in Saskatchewan. I was the biggest book they'd ever done and they vastly underestimated the need for the original print run because of that. And they were going back. We were in third or fourth printing before the first the official pub date because the bookstore orders were coming in fast and furious for the book. So I found the particular formula that worked for me. But bottom line for generally applicability is those ebook rights, you know, are so lucrative. I was reflecting today on my career as a traditionally published author. In a hardcover situation, an author's royalty is starts at 10% of COVID price.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:27:19]:
So it's 90% of the money if you have. Now in Canada, hardcover is about 50, $40 these days, fiction, hardcover. So of that $40, 90% of that goes to other people, to middlemen, either the print publisher or the bookstore. Between 44 and 50% goes to the bookstore, a big hunk goes to the the publisher and that 10% left at the end goes to me. So I get on a $40 hardcover, $4. But, but wait, my agent swoops in and takes his 15% of that $4, which is 660 cents off of my $4. And so I'm down to $3.40 out of a $40 purchase. That seems to me is stunningly ridiculous.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:28:10]:
Trade paperback like this format, the large Format Paper act, the traditional publishing world isn't 10%, it's 8%. And mass market paperback royalties for first time authors are 6%. People are skimming off almost all of the profit from the work that you had created in traditional publishing, whereas in self publishing you can't beat Google or Amazon at their own game. They're going to take that 30%, which is what they take off of Candy Crush. It's what they take off of any app or anything that they send through their, their, their pipeline. But still 70% going directly to you feels like you're being finally, finally properly rewarded for the amount of work that goes into writing a book and that the book is your product, not Penguin Random House. Is not, you know, name any bookstore chain you want to name. It's not their product.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:29:07]:
It's your product. Why should they get the lion's share?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:29:11]:
Yeah. Oh, that is. That is fantastic. Now, we had some questions, and we had some comments that go back to. I'd mentioned the award you had won. Right. Like the most awarded science fiction author. And so some of the questions had to do.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:29:27]:
Had sort of related to that. I'm gonna. I'm gonna scroll back up and find some. So the first one is a question from Tom. And I think. I think. And before I get to Tom's question, I get. I get to ask mine first.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:29:43]:
Do you think that it's the themes. Do you think that it's those themes that you put into a book that not only make them appealable to book clubs and discussions and conversation and word of mouth, which is really important marketing, but do you think that that has an impact on the awards as well?
Robert J. Sawyer [00:30:00]:
I think it has the impact on many of the awards. So, for instance, in science fiction, I've been lucky enough to win both the Academy Award, which is the Nebula, given by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers association, and the People's Choice Award, which is the Hugo. So the People's Choice Award, anybody who's a member of worldcon, the World Science Fiction Convention, can vote on that People's Choice Award. And so their tastes are all over the gamut. They're just consumers.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:30:31]:
Yeah.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:30:32]:
The Academy Award, the Nebula Award, for instance, is much more a case of wanting to knock the socks off of your colleagues. Your colleagues aren't impressed by plot. They plot. Your colleagues aren't necessarily impressed by characterization. They do. Characterization. Your colleagues are impressed by. Wow, that's really interesting.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:30:53]:
Thorny issue that he's dealt with in a way that says something new and insightful about that issue. The Auroras in Canada. And I'm lucky enough to have won more Auroras than anybody else in history by a wide margin. 16 of them.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:31:07]:
I know you've beat me on a few of them, too.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:31:09]:
I. I had. But I've been beaten by very good writers, too. I have to say. I'm never. I've. I've lost way more Auroras than I've won. And I'm always pleased to lose because that's what gives the ward legitimacy if I don't, you know, if I won them every single time.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:31:28]:
Because that's just the Sawyer Award, right?
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:31:29]:
Yeah. Yeah. So.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:31:33]:
You. The. The awards that are given by other writers, and I'll say also the arts grants that are given here by the Canada Council for the Arts, the provincial arts councils, very much they're looking for theme, they're looking for you to be talking about an issue. But there are People's Choice awards and it Dragon Con now has the Dragon Awards which are the most largest voting award pool now which is absolutely a People's Choice awards and very often just goes to a rip roaring adventure. And that's perfectly fine. But for the more for juried awards, any award like the Philip K. Dick Award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, those almost always will go to a thematically rich work.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:32:18]:
And certainly for the Academy Awards given by Mystery Writers of America, the Edgars, the Nebulas by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers association, the readers by the romance industry, Rance Writers America, those are more. Well romance maybe not as much, but we'll go to a thematically rich work. There's lots of thematically rich mystery fiction, don't get me wrong.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:32:38]:
Oh yeah, for sure. So I'm going to get to Tom's question now. So are there then there seem to be then are there some awards programs that kind of have more marketability? So you say I've won this award.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:32:53]:
Not a single one of the awards that troll for you to submit your book so that you can get a sticker to put on your self published book I think has any impact whatsoever. There are many of these awards and a lot of authors spend a lot of money or a lot of time pursuing them and then say I just won the, and I'm going to make up one here, you know the, the Laurel Award for best fantasy novel of the year. Nobody puts that award's name into a search engine. So ask yourself which ones do people search for? Well, the bottom line is in science fiction people search for Hugo, they search for Nebula. There is not yet a self published award for science fiction that anybody in large numbers puts into a search engine. So I want to see all the winners of this award. Whereas there are all kinds of people who have made it kind of a life mission to read all of the Nebula winners, starting with the first one which was Dune or all of the Hugo winners starting way back in 1939. But in terms of awards driving self published fiction, it's only the awards that actually have cachet in traditional publishing that I think actually help propel sales.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:34:10]:
I'm being brutally honest here.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:34:12]:
Yeah, yeah, of course there's a whole.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:34:13]:
Industry out there that wants you to pay your money, enter your book in this award and you'll get. And they'll give you the PNG graphics and the JPEG graphics. You can put them all over your website. Well, guess what? If somebody's come to your website, they're there already. They're not there because. And they're not searching for those award names in the search box on Kobo or the search box on Kindle or the search box on Nook. They just aren't.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:34:39]:
So you've preemptively answered Tom's other question, which was, do you ever pay to enter award programs? And how much is too much?
Robert J. Sawyer [00:34:45]:
Never. Never, Never, never.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:34:47]:
And one penny is too much.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:34:49]:
Yeah, one penny is too much. And I say the same thing about contests, too. Mark mentioned at the beginning, we're judges for Writers of the Future, which is a big prize money contest, but has no entry fee. And I would not have money. Anything to do with it if there was an entry fee. No, I would not spend a penny on entering an award contest. It's just. And.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:35:14]:
And you know, I've been very lucky with awards. Pursuit of awards has a certain patina to it of hucksterism. You know, it's all well and good, and we all do it at awards time in Traditionally published in Science fiction Fantasy. Oh, it's awards time. Let me just remind my followers on Facebook or in my newsletter, this is what I had published last year. That's perfectly fine. Right? But going around and trying to strong arm people who don't normally vote for an award to vote for an award, there. There's a distasteful quality to that that I.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:35:53]:
I just don't like. So. But no, for all of these things that are out there that say, yeah, pay $5, $10, $50, $100, and you'll be considered for this award. It feeds your ego if you get that little PNG graphic at the end, but it doesn't in any way, shape or form, I think, enhance your saleability. I'm being brutally honest here.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:36:16]:
So you're warning us about chasing. Chasing after that. That whale.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:36:20]:
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:36:21]:
Call me. Call me. Ish. Author.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:36:23]:
That's right.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:36:23]:
Okay, that's great.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:36:24]:
Yeah.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:36:25]:
All right, so I want to get back to some of. Some of the stuff we were talking about earlier. Alyssa says, whoa, whoa, whoa. I can get behind theme first, but plot before characters.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:36:35]:
Oh, okay. So this is. This is why. Let me do it for you. And I understand your. Your skepticism, Alyssa. I think that the. The.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:36:45]:
You do it in a reverse order, so you start with a topic. I had to do a novel as an example, mine, one called Frame Shift. Which was a Hugo fine nominal Hugo finalist and also won Japan's top science fiction award. Frameshift all one word. F R A M E S H I F T. It's a term from genetics. I started with the topic. I want to write a book about genetics.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:37:08]:
Knew nothing, I had nothing to say about it. I just knew I wanted this, a hot topic, genetics. So I researched it. And as I researched it I had no preconceptions. There's the original Tor edition. It's now of course my own self published editions in print and in in ebook and audio from Audible. Genetics researched the hell out of genetics and thought what can I say that's provocative about genetics? And I happen to be a Canadian and as I was researching it became apparent to me that here's a provocative thematic statement. The thematic statement is this.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:37:45]:
The only thing that makes sense in the era of predictive genetic testing is socialized medicine. Everybody is insured for everything at the same cost, which is you're a taxpayer. Everybody's insured for everything. It's the only thing that makes sense because otherwise insurance is going to morph into oh well, we can get your genome, Rob Sawyer and sequence your genome. Well, you're at high risk for type 2 diabetes. We're not going to insure you against that. You're at high risk for various cancers, but no risk at all for other hereditary cancers you don't have. A genetic propensity to Alzheimer's will ensure you for the things you're not going to get and deny insurance to you for the things you are going to get.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:38:29]:
There's theme, a topic, genetics theme and then developing a plot. And my plot was okay, well I have to somehow get an evil insurance company and I have to pit it against somebody who is going to be disadvantaged. And then came the character. My character was a Canadian scientist who had discovered that he has the gene for Huntington's disease. Well, Huntington's disease is what's called a tardive disease. It is late onset in life. You can have it, you have it from the moment you're born, the moment you're conceived, the moment the egg and the sperm fuse, you have it. But it doesn't manifest itself often to your 40s, 50s, 60s or later.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:39:12]:
So I have a young guy in his early 30s who is by any medical test you could perform perfectly healthy and working in Canada and gets a dream job offered the United States and finds out that he's being denied health insurance in the United States because of a pre existing condition written in his genes. So topic theme, the plot. Evil insurance company is going to screw over somebody and then the character who is most inconvenienced by my theme of the United States. Still, I wrote this novel in 95, came out in 97. Here it is, 2025. Still an eminently valuable story to sell the United States where people don't automatically have health insurance. So yeah, you develop a character who is most at uncomfortable with your theme. The character.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:40:02]:
And I'll give you another example and go back to an award winner. I won the Science Fiction Fantasy Writers of America, as it was called at the time Nebula Award for a novel called the Terminal Experiment, also a finalist for the Hugo, also won Canada's Aurora Award. And in it the theme was or the top. The plot was a biomedical engineer who discovers scientific proof for the existence of the human soul. Now the theme or the character that that suggests the easiest character. There it is. HarperCollins mass market paperback original. The character that first comes to mind.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:40:39]:
Oh well, okay, so it's got to be somebody who's had a near death experience. He's predisposed to believe in the authenticity of this thing. No, that's the wrong character. It would have been an easy book to write. The right character is a biomedical engineer who in doing his practicum at university had to assist in an organ harvesting transplant operation where he discovered we don't actually take organ transplant donors off of life support until after we've harvested the organs. In other words, they're beating heart, they're showing bio biomedical signs of being alive and then we rip out the heart and then they die because of that. And he was desperate to believe that even though there were biomedical signs of life at that point, that the person really was dead because otherwise he, he was accessory to murder. A much more nuanced and interesting character than the one who is comfortable with the theme that we've discovered.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:41:38]:
Scientific proof that there's a soul that leaves the body at the actual moment of death. Because if it left the body after he had carved into it to carve out the heart, then he's a murderer. You find the person who is most put out by your theme, the person who's most uncomfortable. Because we as writers are torturers, our job is to make miserable the life of our protagonists, to make them go through things that we wouldn't wish on our best friend. And you only find that by knowing your theme and developing a miserable plot to put them through and having your character being the person who is going to have the hardest Time with that plot. Not the easiest time.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:42:21]:
So let's. Very good. Thank you. Alyssa and Andrew asked a question that kind of ties into. That says, so do your characters deviate from your themes and plots sometimes? And if so, do you listen to them and follow them, or do you just kind of force them back into the, I guess, the hellhole you've created.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:42:38]:
For them First, I got to say in the comments here, because not everybody's going to be seeing the comments. Wow. Robert is the real deal. Well, thank you. I appreciate that very much. So this is something that some authors will say. My characters talk to me. They tell me what to do.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:42:52]:
Mine never do. I have to say that I am very much a. A craftsperson. I did a minor, the most useful course I ever did at university, minor in psychology. Because psychology, characterization is simply the art of dramatizing psychological principles. A character rings true if it actually adheres to what we believe human psychology really is. A character doesn't ring true of. No.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:43:22]:
Nobody ever behaves like that. Nobody would do that. Right. So I build my characters brick by brick, and because I have created them brick by brick, they never surprise me. I know what they're going to do. And in fact, I'm seeding things in advance. For instance, the main character in the downloaded is a guy who went to jail and thought he could serve his sentence really quickly. In virtual reality, it would seem like 20 years for him, but only eight months out in the real world because he really wanted to get back to his daughter.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:43:58]:
Right. And that drove his whole psychology was when he comes out and finds that not just 20 years, not just eight months, not three years, but 500 years have passed and his daughter is dead. I knew exactly what his reaction was going to be. But there are writers who say, yeah, my character's talking. I hear voices in my head. To which I say, therapy is available. It is an option. You can find somebody to help you with that problem.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:44:24]:
But that's just my approach to characterization. I know there are a lot of people who live vicariously through their characters, and I don't. But. But I want you, the reader, to do so. So it's a bit of a dichotomy. I am the puppet master who is trying to make you laugh and cry, to feel elation and to feel absolute dejection as I pull the strings. But for me, it is very much, and I'm being brutally honest here, because I don't want you to see the string pulling, but I mean, brutally honest, that that's what I am doing as an author that I'm a conniving son of a. Who is deliberately manipulating your emotions.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:45:05]:
And so my characters are tools along with the language, the words, the prosody, everything that goes into writing fiction are the tools I use to make my characters talk in your head, but they aren't talking in mine.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:45:18]:
Oh, my God. You know, this happens every single time I. I'm lucky enough to get into a conversation with you. That time passes so fast.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:45:27]:
Oh, it does. Oh, my goodness.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:45:28]:
Yeah. We're at 45 minutes already with so many great questions. I. We got to as many as we could.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:45:33]:
Rob.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:45:33]:
I'm hoping I can. I can get you to come back for a future episode so we can continue some of the riveting discussion.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:45:40]:
Sure. Absolutely. I'd be delighted to come back. I see Lexi Green says I don't know the writers of Game of Thrones sold themes the Game of Thrones. You know, George R.R. martin was writing a thematically rich stuff that people came on afterwards and put a patina on it that's down on them. There are all kinds of ways to do things, Lexi. This is the bottom line here.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:45:58]:
Take what I've given here if it's useful for you, and then walk away from if it isn't to say, I don't know or there's another way or I've heard other people say, of course, of course. And your journey as a writer is to find what works for you. And that's the only thing I'm doing here, is putting on that smorgasbord. My particular sampler. Here's my contribution. LA Potluck dinner. If it's tasty, enjoy it. If not, go in another direction.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:46:25]:
And best of luck to you.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:46:28]:
Awesome. Rob, can you please let listeners know where they can find more about you?
Robert J. Sawyer [00:46:33]:
I It's celebrating its third 30th anniversary this year. I was the first science fiction writer in the world to have a website and so I scored that URL. Sfwriter.com you'll find everything that you're interested in there about my work.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:46:46]:
Oh, awesome.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:46:46]:
And on social media, just my name run together. Robert J. Sawyer. No period, no punctuation.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:46:51]:
Robert J. Sawyer at. Okay, awesome.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:46:53]:
And you can find links Twitter at blueskyx. Patreon. Come to my patreon.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:47:01]:
Awesome. Well, thank you again for hanging out with me. I just want to thank you guys all for watching for your great questions. If you are interested in not missing awesome guests like Rob, make sure that you like share, comment, subscribe every Thursday at 1pm we have an interview with some awesome person. Sometimes it's an ask us anything chance for you to interact with some really cool people. Be sure to bookmark D2D live.com so you don't miss out on great guests like Rob. You can always watch these afterwards as well at our YouTube channel. And you can also if you are interested in checking out self publishing and taking control of your author IP, you can sign up for a free account at draft2digital.com Rob, thank you again for hanging out with me today.
Robert J. Sawyer [00:47:47]:
Always a pleasure Mark. Take care my friend.
Mark Leslie Lefebvre [00:47:50]:
Bye everyone.
Kevin Tumlinson [00:47:52]:
Ebooks are great, but there's just something about having your words in print. Something you can hold in your hands, put on a shelf, sign for a reader. That's why we created D2D Print, a print on demand service that was built for you. We have free, beautiful templates to give your book a pro look and we can even convert your ebook cover into a full wraparound cover for print. So many options for you and your books and you can get started right now at draft2digital.com that's it for this week's Self Publishing Insiders with Draft2Digital. Be sure to subscribe to us wherever you listen to podcasts and share the show with your will be author friends and start build and grow your own self publishing career right now@draft2digital.com.