International Bestselling Author Nisha J Tuli discusses how she made writing a career through self and traditional publishing.
Follow her on Instagram @nishajtwrites
Tea and Tales
S1:E7 Author Spotlight: Nisha J Tuli
- Look at me using words I don't even have a meaning of and they're making saints and sentences. - And I use a word that other people don't understand when they're made a reading for me, they'll mark it and say, this is an obscure word, I don't know what it means. And I'm like, just context clues dictionary. This is how we build vocabulary. - The other day I was reading for saints and the one, the person used like sing, but S-I-N-G-E-D singed. - And sounds like, or sing, there's no, there's an S-I-N-G-E. - I have no idea how to pronounce, I read it, I don't hear it. - Listen, see, this is where the Confusion Staunts with English is to burn the edges. - Every day I learn. - Or emotionally, you can sing emotions that may be stung. - Yeah, I'm currently singed, look at me. - And on that note, I do not have any syncedy today where you have. I actually have some, what is a passion fruit tea? It just tastes like normal black tea. So I was a tad disappointed, but I shall drink it into our episode. Let's do this. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Hello, everybody, and welcome to T and Tails. - I'm now. - And I'm Sarah. Thank you for joining us on our episode today. Today is our first author spotlight episode with Nisha J. Tule. We're very excited to get talking with her. But first, we wanna thank those people who have been replying to our videos who have been sharing our messages. - Yeah, so we would first and foremost like to thank Kim Bridges. Thank you for all your support, thank you for all your kind words. And then we would like to thank Runal Murray for sharing our posts and for helping us reach more ears. And with that, let's bring on our guest author today. We have been talking about traditional publishing. We have been talking about self-publishing. And we are very excited to have our guest on today, Nisha J. Tule. And she started out doing self-publishing and then she found herself an agent. And now she is a traditional publisher. So welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. - Thank you. We wanted to ask you first, how did you fall in love with writing? - I was always a reader, just like, you know, most authors are, I always wanted to write books, but like I worked professionally as a writer, like for blogs and marketing and like nonfiction and work as newspapers and magazines, like that kind of thing. But I had never really done fiction until the pandemic, just like so many people. I was working from home. My kids were suddenly like at home and my husband wasn't traveling and I had time, I hadn't had in years. And I just was kind of like, well, you aren't getting any younger. And like, what are you waiting for? So that summer I sat down and I started writing my first book and now it's been almost four years exactly. And I have not stopped. I think I just finished number 16 or 15. So, and by the end of this year, nine or 10 of them will be published. I think I always counted everything. - Goodness gracious. - It was reading on your website that you have seven out now, two with release dates and one that you've said to watch for. That is a lot. - Yeah, okay, that sounds about right. (laughing) - I'm just struggling with one a year. Like that is a lot like kudos to you because no thank you, I like nothing way too much. - Yeah, I got like, I don't know, it was just like, I started it and there was just like this fire lit under me and I was like, I was gonna make this happen no matter what. And originally was gonna be like a tried author. I didn't really know anything about indie books when I first started. I just assumed books were in bookstores and that kind of thing. And I originally wrote the first book and I queered for that. And a few months later, I signed with an agent and then that book went on submission and it sat on submission for a year and a half. And I was like, oh, and you know, the advice is always like keep writing. So I did, I kept writing, I kept writing. And then we put another book on submission, which was a rom-com and that one sat on sub for a year. And I was just like, this is, I was just getting very annoyed and frustrated with the whole process. So, and I really wanted to write adult rom-matacy, which was not called rom-matacy yet, was more fantasy romance. A trad pub was ignoring it completely, despite the success of like authors like Jennifer Armentraud or Sergio Manos, they were not picking up books like that. And it was growing and growing in indie. And that's when I was like, I'm just gonna do this instead. And like, I kept the other books, you know, but I'm gonna put my feet into this pool also. So I published like a little novella at the beginning of 2022. And then another full-length book. And then Trial of the Sun Queen came at the end of 2022. And then that book changed everything, basically. And in the meantime, my first book that was on sub ended up selling to a publisher. And then my rom-com that was in sub ended up selling to a publisher all within like weeks of each other at the very, very end of 2022. I waited and I waited and waited and then everything happened to one. - That is crazy. - That's how it goes sometimes. So by the time I went into 2023, I had seven books under contract with those two, like with those two series. Then Trial was doing really well. I released the second book in the series and then it just started to take off. And I started to get reach outs from foreign publishers. I had some UK publisher come to me wanting to acquire World Rights for the series. And I was like, okay, I need someone to help me with all this. And my agent at the time wasn't, you know, she wasn't the best at her job. And like the books that I sold, sold despite her, not because of her. (laughs) So I went to her and I said, look, here's, it's been happening. I would like to get, like, take this series on like proper submission I had seen. Publishers were starting to acquire indie series for big gobs of money. And I was like, I want to try and do that. She was very, very sweet person. And she agreed. She was like, yeah, I understand. I don't have the right connections for you in adult fantasy. So she was like, go ahead and go and query. And then this time, I queried for two and a half days that time, which was very nice experience. - Wow. - I was sending them out Friday morning by Sunday afternoon ahead and off her, which was crazy. And then I got like-- - And then I got lazy. - Yeah, and the end I got like five or six, I think. So with some like amazing agents. So I ended up signing with Lauren Spiller at Folio. And like she just like got my vision. She understood what I wanted. I wanted someone who I like who could keep up with me. And I can barely keep up with her sometimes. And that's exactly what I wanted. And we hit the ground running. And it took us about a month to like finagle everything because like all of my my tried contracts have like option clauses and competition clauses. So I'm not just free to publish whenever, wherever I want because of those. So we had to like work a few things out with them on how this might look going forward. My MA agent, Lauren, she said, well, we're gonna sub to my editor at Forever Publishing, who is the ones who acquired my rom-com. And I said, but they don't really do fantasy. She said, well, she's your editor. It's polite, we'll sub to her. And it turned out they're like, no, we want to do fantasy. And we're gonna do it with your series. Actually worked out really nicely because both of my publishers are hashed. So like they don't care so much about the competition clause and stuff. Like they actually work together and talk to each other. So it ended up working out really well. We went on submission and it ended up going to auction which was, you know, dream come true. And in the end forever was the highest bidder. And it just made sense logistically to keep it with forever since they were all hashed publishers. - Is it that you got to be that breakout for them? - My little mid-list rom-com that they originally acquired is no longer their little mid-list rom-com because of these other books, right? So like next year when that comes out, it's gonna be a wholly different experience than I would have had all of this not happen. And so I get to work with my editor there who's great. They were really fast. Like, I mean, we hear traditional publishing is so slow. It turns out they are not if they don't want to be. Like they turned around and reprinted the first two books. 'Cause the first two were already released. They basically just slapped their logo on it and kept the cover. We didn't change a single thing inside the books and got those out. So the distribution has been amazing. They're like in every target. They're, you know, they're everywhere which has been so amazing. And then that deal sort of rolled into lots of foreign deals. I think we're in 15 languages so far. - Oh wow. - So that's been really great. The third book just came out a month ago which was a little bit of a longer wait than I had hoped between the two but for tribe publishing, it's like light speed. And then the last one comes out November which is again, light speed for tribe publishing. - So you'll have a new book. You'll have a new book about two months from today and another one, three months from today. - Yeah. - And then one next year. - Yeah. 'Cause my other series, the first one that was acquired with Bookature, the third book and that one comes out in October and then the last one in early 2025 we're just figuring out the final date. But because they're more of a digital publisher, they can be way more flexible and how they... - That story to me is incredibly motivating because for those of us who just keep writing like you said at the beginning, that it does pay off in the end when you find that person who knows those contacts to get you flowing. And I want to take just a second to clarify a couple terms that you've said. Since some of our viewers are new writers, you've said on sub. So what unsub means is that the agent has her novel going to submissions to different editors, correct? - Yeah, basically they're shopping out your book to various publishers. - And when you say trad publishing, trad publishing means traditional publishing for those who need some of the lingo break. - So she's also talked about going on auction and some people might not know what that is. - The auction process was crazy. I had no idea how it worked until we were there and my agent explained whole thing to me. So basically what she did was she writes out, here's what we're offering, here's the rights that are available, a bunch of information about the books there. It was a bit different in this case than a traditionally like a brand new book that's been on submission because this one had sales associated with and it had all kinds of social medias. Like it had, it was, it's a bit different. Anyway, so she says, and here's the deadline. And it was like two days from now. And the night before was the scariest night of my life 'cause I was like, what if nobody actually shows up. (laughing) Basically they said, they send out the, she sends us out, here's the date and time of the auction year offers need to be in by this time. And then the first offer came in that morning and I, she was basically like, I hope you're sitting down 'cause it was like more than my entire wildest dreams could have happened. We actually had a bit of an issue because I had sold the audio rights already. So a couple of publishers did not like that and did not want to work with it because the audio rights were not available. Audio books are like as big a business as e-books are at this point. So to not have those was a bit of a challenge. So a few of them dropped out, even though they were like, we love it, we wish we could acquire it, but the higher up say we can't do it without the audio. I tried to buy the audio back. That was a whole big mess. They told me no way, which was within their rights, but also I'm still mad about it a little bit. But anyways, it doesn't matter. Some of them didn't care. One of them was, yeah, I mean, some of them didn't care and some of them did. So we ended up getting three offers with the auction. We look at them all and then she goes back to the two lower ones and it says, here's what the highest one is, do you want to come up? They all came up to like match and meet. And there's a few like differences versus world rights versus just English rights or just North American rights. Like if they have world rights and they would sell all of the like other languages, which can be or can not be good for you, it depends most agents like to keep as many rights to themselves as possible. And the foreign rights team at Folio is incredible. They are amazing. So it was definitely worth it. At one point, you kind of focus on the one that you're pretty sure you're taking and that that's when the negotiations start. In terms of well, everything from in my case, a lot of it had to do with the competition clauses 'cause I didn't want to be hemmed in or prevented from publishing my own stuff if I wanted to and that kind of thing. So in making sure like in the option clause, basically that they get to look at your next whatever. So we wanted that language to be very clear that the only thing they get to look at next is my adult fantasy. If I wanted to do YA or something, that would be separate. In the end we took the one offer and they sent a whole proposal of two to me like of the marketing they planned and all kinds of things, which was a very different experience than my first one where it was just like, that one ended up being a pre-empt, which is basically if there are more than one offer, they will sort of give you enough money that you kind of like that it doesn't go to auction, that they're just like, this is here's a decent amount and you'll just take it. And in that case it made sense to do that. - The money that Nisha is talking about in all of this is the advance, correct? The advance. - The advance, the advance amount. So what I get up front and in my case it's broken into thirds. So basically I got a third of the contract, the full contract at the beginning. I get a third of each book as it's accepted and then I get a third of each book once it publishes. So to spread out over like a couple of years, which is actually pretty good. A lot of publishers do force and this publisher usually actually only does two but because it was a pretty large amount, they split it into three times. Then once you earn out your advance, so basically once you earn enough sales to sort of cover that amount, then you start earning royalties on top of that. And that is actually not the end goal. Most books do not earn out. That is, it's actually not that they have, they start making money off you long before you earn out. So it's not their goal, yeah. - Yeah. I want to know, that's just me personally. So you talk about you originally you wanted to do traditional publishing because of the frustration and long weight of it, then you did your self publishing and then it turned into traditional publishing again. And then you said that you have your publishers who do your traditional publishing for you and then you want your own novels that you want to self publish. Why do you want to do that? Like why don't you just like have them, let them have everything? Is there specific like genres or specific, I don't know, novels that you're like, no, they're my babies and I want the cover to be exactly the way I want it to be with nobody else's input. - Yeah, I mean, I think that's a bit of a like, there's a lot of myths around traditional publishing and that somehow you lose like, suddenly it's not your book anymore and the editor's going to change everything and they're going to cover you hate and blah, blah, blah. And like, yeah, of course that happens sometimes but that's not the general thing that happens. Like my editor makes a suggestion and I can take it or leave it. So like she's not making me change anything. She's a publisher, editor who's worked for and publishing for years and years. Like her insights are good. Like they're helping my book, they're not making them worse. Nothing that is ever suggested is a you have to do this. It's a, hey, what do you think? And I can either take the advice or I can take that advice and change it up to sort of be somewhere in between what I had and they had or I can be like, no, I hate that. I'm not using that at all. Nobody is ever going to say anything about that. I'm sure there are horror stories just like there are with anything. But that is not and that is not the case for anyone. I know who is with a big five publisher. But indie publishing, it depends. Cause sometimes it's quicker, you get money upfront. Sometimes it's fun. Cause sometimes like you wanted to have like, you have control, I shouldn't say control. I hate that word because it sounds like traditional publishing means you have no control. It's not true at all. I think with the indie publishing, you sort of, you are owning every part of the process. So like if a book box comes to me and it's like, we want to do special editions of your books. If it's my indie book, then I can do whatever I want with that, right? I'm doing my own special edition of my group of novellas. I'm doing into an omnibus that I'm creating just for events next year that I'm doing myself because it's just fun for me. I enjoy doing that. But I think like if that's not something someone wants to do, like they don't want to do those things, then maybe you don't want indie pubs. It all depends on what you want out of it. I want a little bit of both because I don't want to have all my eggs in one basket. I mean, Katie Robert talks about this a lot when she was a mostly trad pubbed and suddenly her sales dried up and the world fell out from under her. She was like, I'm never doing this again. So now she diversifies, she has Patreon. She has indie, she has trad. So if one thing dries up, then you're not left with nothing. This is the only job I have. I quit my job two years ago. This is my career. So I have to think long term, right? Even when all of this was happening, I'm like, well, even if they fuck it up completely and these books don't end up like being a complete mess, I can always go back to indie publishing. I still have the audience. I still have the people who read them. I'm a planner. I'm always thinking 17 steps ahead. Eventually I actually would love to start a dark romance pen name completely separate. That is so big and indie that I don't know if it would be even worth trying to try and trade for that genre. So it just depends on, and it's only because they're into romanticity right now, right? In a few years they're gonna be into something else and you never know what the future holds. - Very true. - I love that analogy because my background is in accounting and so it's smart advice. Don't put everything in one area. Make sure you diversify. Make sure it's in different areas and choosing the book, which one works better for what area. That's fantastic. - I do want to ask you, what advice would you give to a new writer who's looking into publishing? - Nobody likes to hear this, but I think before you put a single word on the page, you have to think about what you want from your writing. Do you just wanna have it out there in the world, slap it up on Amazon and have your friends and family read it? Or do you wanna be in bookstores and have a big huge advance? Because that will inform every step of the process along the way. I talk a lot about writing to markets and I know that some people consider that a dirty phrase, but the reality is if you want a big selling book, you have to write to market it. You know, there's a few exceptions to that rule, but for the most part, you need to give people something they're looking for and make it your own. Like I was very conscious when I wrote "The Child of the Sun" queen is that I wanted it to feel familiar, but not the same, right? As the people who read that genre. Like I want you to read it and be like, yeah, I recognize some of these elements in the stories I love, but it also feels different because of XYZ. But I always was publishing to make money. Like I'm not, like there's no ifs ands or buts about it. Like I can go torment myself some other way. I don't need to be doing this otherwise. Like there's plenty of other ways for me to work, 16 hours a day. If you want the big bookstore distribution, like you can't, then you have to think about what traditional publishing is acquiring at the moment and you have to think about how that book's gonna be received and learn stuff in hindsight too. And I think we all do, but I think learning as much about both processes upfront is a huge help. I think it would be a huge help for people 'cause then they can make decisions about what makes sense for their goals, but yeah. Ultimately, I think you need to know what your goals are. Like what is it you want from this? - I know with indie publishing, you're completely on your own in the sense that you have to market yourself. You have to do everything by yourself basically. Whereas with traditional publishing, you do get help from publishers. How did you go about marketing your novels when you decided that you wanted to do self publishing? - Well, I get asked this question so much. It's hard to say because ultimately the best marketing is the book. And like when I talk about writing to market, that's what I mean. You have to first write a book that people want to read. And it does not that it needs to be a good book. It needs to be something that resonates with people in some way. There's gotta be that thing that makes them tell all their friends about it. 'Cause ultimately that's what what work is because other people talk about my book, not me. They get that all the time. We're like, oh, I tell all my friends to read this. Like whatever thing about it is what makes them tell people to read about it. - When I do social media, I have spent many, many hours losing life to TikTok. And I mean, I came from a marketing background. I knew all of this stuff already. So that was a big advantage on my part. I just had to switch the industry basically that I was doing before. I did ads, I did PR boxes. Parks are a huge thing. I mean, I did lots of different things. And it's hard to always answer that question because it's gonna work differently for everybody. The important things is really knowing who your reader is. Like who exactly is it that you are talking to? What other books do they like? How do yours compare to those books and contrast with those books? Everything else has to fall with that. You can throw all kinds of money at something, but if the book itself is not interesting for people or it's not compelling for them for whatever reason, it doesn't matter. It's not gonna go anywhere. So it's hard. There's so many different avenues, so many options. I think it's just being careful. There's no two ways about it. Like there are free options, but there was their only ever gonna get you so far. You're gonna have to spend some money and decide how much that is worth to you. Some good books just never find their audience. It's just the reality. And you just, that's why you write another one. For indie publishing, careers are built not on one big hit. I got lucky and that happened to me, but indie careers are built on a backlist. But having 20 or 30 books out, like that's how you build a career when you're an indie author is writing lots of books and selling some of everyone. And then all that adds up together to a good amount of money. Having the one big hit is, you know, you know, everybody would like that, but that's not the reality. That's not 99% of people who are doing well. - I also don't think people want to just be one hit wonders. - Well, I mean, not two, but yeah, absolutely that. But yeah, I mean, a sustainable career is built on writing lots of books. - Thank you for joining us today, Nisha. If you want to learn more about Nisha's books or go and order some, her website is nishajtually.com that will be in the description. And she has an amazing list. - Thank you very much for taking the time out of your busy schedule. We do not want to take up any more of your writing time. - And we don't want to take up more of our listeners writing time. We want those fingers back on keyboards and pens back on paper. In a couple of episodes, we have our first special episode where we get to react to your comments. So we want to put out our question for that episode. What is your favorite weirdest or most used quote? So we want to see your comments down below so we can have a fantastic and funny episode about quotes. - So for example, because, so I'm off the cones and we have a lot of weird phrases that we do. And then sometimes when I speak to English people, I'm just like, I'm gonna directly just translate whatever I just wanted to say from off the cones to English. So if you tell me something and I'm surprised, and I'm gonna be like, well, so lapping with a wet fish. Hmm, good to know that, cool. So that's kind of the vibes we're going with. - And remember to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at @tanttailspodcast and on Twitter/x at podcastttails. - And don't forget to go to that purple icon on your Apple device or any device and just go find an Apple podcast. And please go and give us five stars and go review and give comments because that helps us to go up, up, up on their charts. And we would appreciate it so much. We would love it so much. Thank you. Happy writing. Bye. 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