After years of mostly existing in indie space, Romantasy has finally burst onto the trad pub scene where it now reigns supreme, especially in SFF. Today, we talk to Nisha J Tuli, who spotted romantasy's trad potential early and whose career took off as a result. Her career trajectory is a microcosm of what is happening with romantasy more broadly, and gives us the chance to explore what it is like to catch the crest of a publishing wave. Nisha also shares with us specific tactics she employed as an indie author, and how they could be useful for trad, indie, and hybrid authors alike.

Other topics: Sunyi comes out in defense of writing to market, Nisha stresses the importance of still writing what you love (even when writing to market), and how they intersect. There are different types of readers, and different types of writers, and they have different goals with regard to books. We also discuss the amount of money to be made in this particular subgenre, why Nisha chose to go trad/hybrid after seeing indie success; and the longevity of romantasy overall.

Sunyi and Scott have always maintained that "bigger is better" when it comes to book deals, and that any downsides will also apply to smaller advance sizes. But Ed Wilson, the literary agent and director Johnson & Alcock, believes the discussion is much more nuanced, and that 'blockbuster' book advances can sometimes be a symptom of publishing not working well.

With 18 years of experience in the industry, Ed brings a shrewd but frank perspective on a variety of important topics in trad publishing--along with some thoughts on American football, and the shininess of Scott's teeth. Oh, and we think you'll love his "petty hill" segment at the end!

Topics covered:

• Book advance sizes, and what they mean for your career
• Leverage, and managing publishing relationships
• Whether publishers really can "stall" an author's career
• Crucial contract clauses for the modern author
• The importance of literary agent relationships
• Editors getting insider book deals
• Football comparisons
• Bookscan inaccuracy
• And more!

Kristina Perez has lived all over the world, working alternately as a journalist, an author, and now as top literary agent. In this episode we cover a number of different topics, putting forward a combination of our own questions and reader-submitted questions, chatting with Kristina generally about the state of the industry and her multi-sided perspective on it.

Topics include: reviving a flagging career, romantasy, trends and pitches, a nuanced discussion on the relevance of platform, and Scott attempting to guess Kristina's accent. Kristina also outlines some of the help she provides her authors, and graciously gave us a number of links to use in the show notes (seen below)