On a recent edition of First Draft Friday, I talked with USA Today bestselling author Xio Axelrod about the differences between being traditionally published and self-published. Xio loves the total control of self-publishing and the collaborative partners in a traditional publishing house. During the interview, Xio shared her fascinating journey from being a full-time musician to becoming a successful author.
Here are some key takeaways from my conversation with Xio:
Accidental beginnings
Xio’s entry into the world of writing was unplanned. Initially a full-time musician, she began dabbling in writing while on tour in Europe. Her first significant writing project, inspired by a political thriller TV show, was a fan fiction piece that gained unexpected popularity on Tumblr. This accidental start paved the way for her future writing career.
Transition from music to writing
Xio’s background in the music industry significantly influenced her writing career. As an indie rock musician, she was familiar with the DIY approach to creating and marketing her work. This experience translated seamlessly into self-publishing, where she applied her skills in branding, design, and promotion to her books.
Learning the publishing landscape
Before publishing her first novella, Xio spent a year studying the publishing industry, attending conferences, and networking with other authors. This preparation helped her understand the mechanics of publishing and build a supportive community. Her initial foray into publishing was a low-key novella release, which unexpectedly garnered significant attention and established her presence in the literary world.
From indie to traditional publishing
Despite her success as an indie author, Xio eventually felt the need to reach a broader audience. In 2018, she began receiving interest from traditional publishers at conferences. Her transition to traditional publishing started with Sourcebooks, who approached her with an interest in her unique voice. This move allowed her to expand her reach and resources, illustrating the benefits of hybrid publishing.
Navigating editorial changes
Xio’s experience with traditional publishing brought new challenges, especially during the editorial process. She shared the difficulties of adjusting to a new editor after her initial one left mid-project. Despite the changes, Xio emphasized the importance of staying true to her voice while remaining open to editorial guidance, ultimately finding a balance between creative integrity and professional collaboration.
Title and cover design process
The transition to traditional publishing also involved relinquishing some control over aspects like title and cover design. While Xio had her initial titles and cover concepts, the final decisions involved input from the publisher. This collaborative process, though sometimes challenging, resulted in successful branding and marketing for her books, such as the well-received title “The Girl With Stars in Her Eyes.”
The extended timeline of traditional publishing
One significant difference between indie and traditional publishing that Xio highlighted was the timeline. Traditional publishing operates on a longer schedule, often requiring authors to wait months, if not years, between completing a manuscript and seeing it published. This extended timeline can make it challenging to maintain the initial excitement and energy around a book, but it also allows for thorough marketing and distribution planning.
The importance of authorial voice
Throughout her journey, Xio stressed the importance of maintaining her unique voice. Whether through indie or traditional routes, she consistently aimed to produce work that was authentically hers. Her ability to adapt while preserving her creative identity is a key takeaway for aspiring hybrid authors.
By the way, there’s some confusion about the term “hybrid authors.” Here I’m referring to authors who are both self-published and published by a traditional publishing house. This is quite different from “hybrid publishing,” which is a service offered to authors who want to simply write and turn to a hybrid publisher to handle the publication, distribution and marketing of their book.
It was a great discussion, one you won’t want to miss! Click below to watch our 30-minute recording. Keep scrolling if you’d prefer to read the transcript.
More info:
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Check out Xio Axelrod’s books on BingeBooks.
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TRANSCRIPT:
First Draft Friday 71 – Writing as a Hybrid Author
Alessandra Torre: Hello everyone, and welcome to First Draft Friday, episode 71. My name is Alessandra Torre. I’m with Authors AI and I am so excited today to be joined by Xio Axelrod. And she is going to be talking all about her experience being a hybrid author, which means that she has both traditionally published and self-published, this is a hot topic, so I’m really excited to jump into it. Welcome to the show. Do you want to just tell the audience a little bit about yourself?
Xio Axelrod: Oh, sure. Thank you so much for having me by the way. Big fan. I am 10 years into my publishing journey. I write contemporary romance and contemporary fiction. And then I started years ago writing fanfic. So I try to slip some paranormal stuff in there, although I haven’t really published a lot of paranormal, so it’s mostly been contemporary, but yeah, kind of all over the place. I’m a moody writer, so.
Alessandra Torre: I love it. I think we all are. All the greats, right? Yeah. So can we go back in time 10 years? Do you have a background in writing? What prompted that first book?
Xio Axelrod: No, I accidentally wrote a book. I was a full-time musician, actually, and I was on the road. And when you’re playing shows in Europe, the shows are really late. Here in the States, shows concerts, start at 8:00, something like that. When I would do a show in Europe, it started at 11. So I would get back from a gig at three in the morning and be wired. And so I would just dabble in stuff on my Tumblr blog and my friend, Denny Brice. I don’t know if you know Denny. She had me watching this TV show that was a political thriller or something like that. And I said, oh, this isn’t really my jam. But the characters were so interesting, and the fandom was really, really wild. And so I would just watch the show and sort of dabble, write little dribbles about it and it turned into this 200,000 word, nine-month project that took on a life of its own.
Alessandra Torre: Were you publishing it as you went on fanfic? Or this was just on your computer, nobody saw it?
Xio Axelrod: It was on my Tumblr blog. I would do a couple hundred words here and there. And then people started asking for more. And so it was 2 or 3 chapters a week I was posting and it went viral. I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I had no idea. They’re talking about it on Twitter and stuff. And I was, “What is happening?” She said you need to come to a conference with me and figure out what to do with this, because people were asking to buy it and I was like, “You just read it for free. Why do you want to pay for this?” You know? So it was a whole different experience for me coming from music into this. I knew nothing about publishing. I didn’t even know what genre I was writing. I didn’t know anything. And so I went, you know, in completely green. And she said, we got to do something with it, but I didn’t. I sat on it for a little while. I spent about a year studying publishing, met a lot of authors, went to conferences, and stuff. And then a year into it, I decided, okay, I’m gonna quietly publish a novella to see what the mechanics were, you know, just to understand. The platforms and stuff. I didn’t market it. I didn’t do anything. And then I think I told one of the authors, little groups of, you know, Facebook groups I was in and they said, “Xio wrote a book”. And then all of a sudden it was in everybody’s blog, everyone’s talking about it. And I was, “Oh, OK.” So this is what networking is, you know? So it was really cool. But I definitely fell into this career.
Alessandra Torre: Well, let’s talk about music for a minute because it’s interesting because our industries have a lot of parallels. We both kind of went into self-publishing at about the same time in terms of indie music artists being able to now, you know, just create a song and put it on the Internet. So when you say you were a musician, what kind of musician were you?
Xio Axelrod: So I’m a singer.
Alessandra Torre: You are.
Xio Axelrod: And at the time I had been touring in the UK mostly with an acoustic, you know, I had a guitarist. I sometimes had a percussionist with us. Then we would do pubs and venues. Then it expanded a bit outside of the UK into Portugal and stuff. And so I was just doing my thing and trying to find my lane. I’m an indie rock musician which was really hard at the time to look like me and do that style of music. People were [tilts head to the side and squints] kind of like that, you know? And I was totally indie, so coming from being an indie musician into self-publishing was a no-brainer for me because I was so used to, you know, designing my album artwork or my show and everything was DIY. And so applying that process to publishing was seamless for me. But yeah. So it was, it was, it was a huge learning curve. But at the same time, I had a lot of skills that I had picked up on the music side that I could apply to this.
Alessandra Torre: And did you write your music? I mean, did you write your songs? Okay, so you were already in the creative space in terms of creation?
Xio Axelrod: Yeah, I grew up in the music industry, so I’ve been recording since I was about 4.
Alessandra Torre: Is Xio your singing name?
Xio Axelrod: No, I keep that separate from my author name. But with this series that I’m doing with Sourcebooks, it’s a fictional band. And so I perform music. I record music as the band, so if people want to listen. They can find all the …
Alessandra Torre: On the audiobook they can?
Xio Axelrod: No. On Spotify and Apple Music and other stuff. Yeah. The band has music.
Alessandra Torre: That’s really cool. Are there any excerpts of the songs on the audiobook? No.
Xio Axelrod: You know, I don’t think so. They haven’t approached me about doing that, which is. Yeah, I hadn’t even thought about that. Maybe for book three.
Alessandra Torre: Even if it was humming a couple of lines or something because a lot of times I want to include a line from a song and you never can because we don’t have the rights to them. Right? You’re in a unique position where you do that. You could do that cool, cool stuff. Okay. So you started indie publishing. And then at what point in time did you decide to make the transition to traditional and how did that transition happen?
Xio Axelrod: Sure. Even before I published my first novella, I was, “Okay, I need a name. Yeah. And a platform. I need to get on all the socials. I had my branding all set up to go because that’s how my brain works. I had a couple of authors say to me, “You really shouldn’t do that before you have a publishing deal because it’s confusing.” And I was, “Why wouldn’t I want to have my name established? So, you know, I published a couple of novellas. I did some anthologies. I finally split that big 200,000-word thing into two pieces and published that. And I got to the point where I had name recognition from the books, but also because I was really big with supporting other authors with their releases. I would do workshops on social media for beginners and people who weren’t comfortable on social media. I’m a social media butterfly and got my name out there. Over time through this guerrilla marketing campaign that I launched on my own, I got some name recognition. About 2018. I started getting approached at conferences. “Hey, Xio.” An editor or an agent would approach me and say, “Have you ever thought of…” And it wasn’t until around then that I said I’ve done all I can do because one, I don’t have crazy money sitting around to do a bunch of ads.
I’ve never been an ads person. I’ll do a boosted post or something on Facebook or Instagram. I know authors who do amazing work with ads, and I’m just not one of them. And I know my wheelhouse. Right. I’d reached as many people as I could reach on my own. So I was open to working with someone. And then Sourcebooks approached me and said, “Hey, we really like your voice. Do you have anything we can look at?” That’s a unique position to be in. Having somebody knock on your door for change. So I was like, “Yeah, I’ve had this idea for this all-female rock band series.” They said, “Sounds good, let’s do it.” I had no agent at the time, so I was scrambling, calling friends, saying, “Who can I talk to? Who can I talk to?” I ended up calling an agent that I had met at a conference years ago, but we’d never really had the talk, you know? I said, “Well, I have this deal on the table. I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t want to do it on my own. And she said, “Let’s work together.” So I got the deal and the agent at the same time. And it happened to work out that way. People always talk about the path of publishing, and I know mine is the winding route. No one’s path is the same as anyone else’s. And don’t try to follow me because I couldn’t even tell you how I did it.
Alessandra Torre: But when you said, “I have an idea for an all-female rock group.” What happened? Did you create a synopsis? Did you write an outline? Did you write character breakdowns? Did you just write a 2 or 3-sentence pitch? They trusted your voice and they wanted to work with you or did you have a little bit of a proposal?
Xio Axelrod: Yeah, it was a little bit of both. I met with the editor who’s no longer with them, but she said, “I really love this idea. Write it down.” So I made a quick proposal. I’m really bad at outlining. I’m really glad they didn’t ask for an outline because I’m not good at it. And so I wrote this proposal and it was basically, here are four book ideas I have for these four people. They had been living in my head. At least two of them had been living in my head for a while. I just wasn’t sure when I’d get around to writing this because I was just letting them simmer. And so when they asked, I said, “Hey, I have this idea.” Now I can flesh these people out. So I fleshed out their stories, at least the first two. And for the other two. I don’t really know who they are yet, but there’s a bass player. I said, “It’s four musicians. I can figure it out. I had titles and all this stuff. I’m going to do music and I’m going to have swag. And they’ll be this whole verisimilitude…
Alessandra Torre: Like a real band.
Xio Axelrod: So the band has its own social media. The club they play in has its own website and gear. They realized it was a project that I was trying to put together. And I think they bought into that as well as hopefully my writing. It was an interesting process.
Alessandra Torre: So then in the past, you had written books and worked with an editor or self-edited it and published it. I can see our audience. If you have questions and comments, don’t be shy. Feel free to pop your questions in and we’ll answer as many of them as we can during the next 20 minutes. But can you take us through that process from start to finish of working with a publisher? Most of our listeners have never worked with a traditional publisher. Sourcebooks is a fantastic publisher. Can you talk to us about that? Did they just give you a deadline and then say, “We’ll see you in three months with the first draft?” What was the process?
Xio Axelrod: There was a little bit of panic on my part in the beginning because as I said, the acquiring editor left Sourcebooks in the middle of my first round of edits.
Alessandra Torre: They had received the manuscript, were doing edits, and she left.
Xio Axelrod: And she left. We had been going back and forth because she had a slightly different idea of what the book was going to be than I did. And so, she left, I got a new editor, who, fortunately for me, said, “Give me the book that you want me to read.” Forget what was going on, you know? So I had the chance to rework it and give it to her. We’re going through the developmental edits and it went twice as long as it normally would probably. Just because I was a little bit shell-shocked because I’d self-edited everything up to that point. I’d never worked with an editor. And in my first editing experience, she left. So was it me? But it wasn’t. It was a really interesting process. And Sourcebooks was great because it was all very new to me. She held my hand through it, and said, “I understand that you’ve never done this before. And here are the rounds that we’re going to go through. And this is what it’s going to look like.” It was really good. But yeah, nerve-wracking to have someone tell you “This is great. Now change everything.” And the timeline is different. That’s the biggest thing for me. Because as indies, we kind of decide when, where, and how. When you’re working with a publisher, they say, “Nope, we need it by this time. We have to have this by this date, and if you don’t, your book is going to be pushed out to another.”
Alessandra Torre: There are repercussions if we miss. Yeah, definitely. People are waiting on them So if we have to get an extension, then everyone has to shift their calendar and other books that are on their schedule.
Xio Axelrod: It’s a domino effect. Yeah.
Alessandra Torre: And it’s also such a far-out timeline. With Sourcebooks, you have your book that’s out right now, The Girl With Stars in Her Eyes, and then you have a book that’s releasing February 6th. How long ago did you finish that book, final edits?
Xio Axelrod: Final edits, I think it was nine months ago when I did the final pass pages.
Alessandra Torre: That’s a struggle for me as well. So, Xio, I’m hybrid and indie. We can rave about this book and say, “Oh my gosh, I just wrote this great scene and I’m so excited.” And I’m working with the cover designer. And you’re promoting, promoting, promoting and then you have to say “and the release date is in a month or three weeks or whatever,” and then you’re counting down. I have books coming out that I’ve almost forgotten what they’re about. It was so long ago and I can’t remember the little stories about when I was writing it and I had this inspiration from this or that. So by the time it comes out, it’s hard to create that energy with the readers?
Xio Axelrod: Yeah. You have to read the book to remember what happened. I did a book club for The Girl With Stars in Her Eyes a couple of weeks ago. It was a virtual book club. That book came out in 2021. They were saying, “In this scene when this, this….” And I was thinking, “Wait, let me think…” I had to do a refresher. And I feel that with Girls With Bad Reputations, even though we’ve been in the promo mode now for about a month. I’ve had to go through and see where is that scene. Because things moved around when you’re working on the manuscript. And this scene was at the end, now it’s somewhere in the middle, that kind of thing. So yeah, it’s the time. Time does a lot of things to you when you’re outside of the world and outside of the head of your characters, and then you have to jump back in and remember who they are, where they are, and what’s going on. It’s wild.
Alessandra Torre: I was at a book club and someone asked me about a character, a detailed, intelligent question about a character. I had no idea who that character was! I spent the first three minutes answering that question, trying to figure out what book she was talking about. It was the same thing. It was a major character. As soon as I realized, oh, yeah, that’s right. So I wrote that book six years ago. So, that was your first experience working with an editor, and I know with your first editor who ended up leaving, there were some extensive edits or edits that y’all were kind of at different places. So, were there any times with either that you pushed back? Do you feel if you pushed back and they pushed back that you would lose that pushed back? Or did you feel that you kind of had the ultimate say if there was a disagreement on a plot point or an aspect of the story?
Xio Axelrod: In that first round, some pushback didn’t get shut down because they always say, “It’s up to you.” But, you know, it was really fair.
Alessandra Torre: We know who’s…
Xio Axelrod: Yeah. I thought, “Okay, well, I guess this isn’t working.” And so I did go into my shell a little bit in that first round because I thinking, “Maybe I don’t know how to write a book. Maybe I don’t know what I’m doing.” And it is a different audience I’ve noticed as well. You know, the traditional audience is a little different than the indie reader. And so I said, “Well, they know what they’re talking about.” When we went through the second iteration of the book, I said, “I have very strong feelings about certain things here. And I think for my story in my voice, these need to stay.” And they said, “Okay, it’s your voice.” So yeah. For better or worse, you know, they stayed in there, most of it.
Alessandra Torre: I’ve worked with three different traditional publishers, and every time I’ve stuck to my guns on something, they always back away. So that was good. And I remember my first experience was with Harlequin and I was not confident. I was a new author. You know, they bought my debut novel. It had already been self-published. They bought it. We were going through it. And I remember the editor said, “The main character, the hero, cannot sleep with another girl after he meets the heroine. Like it can’t happen.”
Xio Axelrod: Yeah. You know Harlequin.
Alessandra Torre: Yeah. Not only did he sleep with another girl, he did it while on a date with my character. I think he left her alone. He went off and slept with somebody.
Xio Axelrod: Oh my gosh.
Alessandra Torre: And now I look back, yes, not only did I break a rule of romance, but I ran that thing over the tractor three times and backed up.
Xio Axelrod: A few times.
Alessandra Torre: Yeah! But it was the major plot point. And had we changed it, I would have had to change a lot. And that book had succeeded. It had been wildly, you know, it had taken off. And so even though I was very unsure of myself I had said, “I’m gonna be the easiest author ever. I’m gonna make this such a great experience to work with me.” But that one I stuck with and they left it there. She said, “OK, but it’s a mistake.” I think traditional publishers do respect the creative process and the story, but on the packaging side, I have hit multiple times. I’ll feel strongly about something and my opinion is taken into consideration and then it is disregarded. And I’m OK with that because packaging is their thing. So we talked about the editorial process and then it came time for the title and cover design and packaging and all that. You said initially that you had your titles picked out. Did those titles end up happening, or did they end up getting a different title?
Xio Axelrod: No, no. It’s funny. I also work with Bluebox Press which is a very small indie. And the editorial there was such a different process than with Sourcebook. So now I have two experiences to compare to each other. And the same thing with the cover design and titling. I had the four titles for the Lilly series with Sourcebooks, and they actually liked the titles, but then when they read the first book and looked at the title, they said that they didn’t match. I don’t know, but it’s a great title and I still love the title. Yeah, I’m still going to use it one of these days. But, it went into this round of sort of title guessing. We had, I think, 40 titles on a sheet, and it was focus-grouped. I think it was Dominique, the head of Sourcebooks who said, “I really like The Girl With Stars in Her Eyes. That’s what it should be.” And what are you going to say? You know what I mean? And she was right.
Alessandra Torre: Right. I met Dominique. I wouldn’t argue with her.
Xio Axelrod: Yeah. So. And I said, “That’s OK. It’s a great title. She’s absolutely right.”
Alessandra Torre: Yeah. Awesome title. I love that title. And then the cover, was it how you envisioned it? Do you have a copy of the book just so we can show it?
Xio Axelrod: I have the Book of the Month copy here.
Alessandra Torre: Now, did they have a unique cover?
Xio Axelrod: No, it’s just that it’s the hardcover.
Alessandra Torre: Look how thick it is. How many pages?
Xio Axelrod: 400 and something. I don’t know, it’s big.
Alessandra Torre: I said pages. I meant words.
Xio Axelrod: Oh I’m trying to remember. I think it was 118,000.
Alessandra Torre: Oh yeah.
Xio Axelrod: These are big books. I love the cover. But I wanted her to have purple lipstick. I wanted her to wear sunglasses, and I wanted her to be peeking over them. And I said, other than that, do what you gotta do. They did their thing and I thought it was really cool. And I love that on the side. And you can see her right there.
Alessandra Torre: They captured all of those things.
Xio Axelrod: Yeah that’s really cool. It’s a great cover. And I love the cover for the second book as well. It’s got a different feel for the character. I love her hair. I love the attitude. She’s got the hand in the pockets and the leather jacket and the whole thing.
Alessandra Torre: Did you have specific things you wanted to communicate with it?
Xio Axelrod: My editor and I worked on these together. In terms of feel, I sent her a lot of character inspiration images of what Kayla, the character, looks like. She’s got big red hair and freckles and the whole thing. And she knew her personality from reading the book. So I said, “I want Kayla to be represented on the cover.” And they nailed it right away As soon as I saw the cover. Initially, the book had a different title and a different cover.
Alessandra Torre: Oh, really?
Xio Axelrod: Yeah. A different title on a different cover. And I wasn’t crazy about the title. I loved the cover. When they said they were going to redo everything for this because it was a different field, I said, “Yeah, let’s do it as long as there’s a unifying element through the series,” which I think will be the font treatment. Each girl can have her own feel on the cover. And I think they’re really great. Sourcebooks is amazing with the recovers, I haven’t seen a bad cover from them for anyone.
Alessandra Torre: One thing I love about traditional publishers is their graphics team. Their cover designers. Yeah, they get some incredible covers out. And I love how each of those feels different. But it does…
Xio Axelrod: It’s like that one unifying element. Yeah.
Alessandra Torre: Are they all going to be Girls Something?
Xio Axelrod: I don’t know. We don’t know what the other two titles are yet. I suspect so. But working with Bluebox Press on the cover for Love on the Byline which is this one <holds up book>, We were very collaborative on this, and there are Easter eggs on the cover for the second book.
Alessandra Torre: That’s super cool.
Xio Axelrod: This is really fun. The T-shirt he’s wearing and there’s a billboard in the background. It’s been cool for me because one of the things that I was really worried about when I decided to sign contracts was that I would lose creative control over things completely. You know what I mean? Having some input is better than having no input, because you hear authors grumbling about “I really don’t like this cover, but I have to promote this book.” Do you know what I mean? Or “I really hate this title, but I have to promote this book.” You have to pretend. I actually genuinely love my covers and titles. But I feel bad for the people who have to grin and bear it.
Alessandra Torre: One publishing experience, they sent me six cover options and I thought, “I’m gonna be the coolest, easiest author they’ve worked with.” I said, “They’re all fine. Whichever, except number three. I hate number three. Any other cover I’m cool with.” They replied three days later. “Okay, we decided to go with number three.” I understand. I get it. I’ll go sit in my lane and I’ll write. I’ll pretend that I like it. But I was not a good author in the beginning. My debut novel had been purchased. They rushed it through to publish it on their side. And then the sequel was supposed to come out six months later but they didn’t have enough preorders. So they pushed it back and it was 18 months. And so I had to go online and announce that the date was gonna be pushed back again. I went online, ranting about it, complaining about how it’s not my fault … the publisher, blah, blah, blah. And I don’t think that post was live for three minutes and I got a call from my agent. She said, “You cannot do this. No. Take it down. The publisher’s already called me.” And I just didn’t realize. I was young and dumb and I just didn’t realize that this is a business relationship and this is my business partner.
And even if I have certain emotions or feelings, we need to have a united front. I’m sure things I do frustrate them, but they’re not going on social media and complaining about me missing my deadline or a typo-riddled first draft that was horrible. So it was interesting for me as an indie realizing that I am used to being in control of everything, and I’m apparently a control freak. And now I’ve delivered my story and they’re going to run with it. They’re going to promote it. They are more financially invested than I am in it.
Xio Axelrod: That was one of the big decisions I had to make when I started to open myself up to trad. I have books that are the book of your heart, but can I have something that if they change it–I mean, if her name changes, I’ve created entities in the book and I can’t use that because of whatever reason. You’d have to change your title. I need to find something that I’ll be okay with if they do that, you know what I mean? I thought that with a rock band, that happens anyway. People’s appearances change. If I can be okay with it in music, then I can be okay with it here. And fortunately, I haven’t had to draw too much blood for this series, but, I’m prepared. Letting go of some of that control is the biggest, biggest aspect that a lot of people have to deal with.
Alessandra Torre: Well, we are down to the last minute of the show. You’ve been such a fantastic guest. It sounds like you’re really happy. What do you think is the future of Xio? Do you think you’ll continue self-publishing and traditional publishing? Do you think you’ll kind of stay in the traditional publishing line?
Xio Axelrod: No, I will remain a hybrid. I haven’t published anything on my own in a bit, other than an anthology that I do every year. Scheduling is another big thing that we didn’t get to talk about; trying to not step on anyone’s toes. Not cannibalizing releases and stuff like that. My next release after these next two Girls with Stars and my next Bluebox Press will be an indie. And that’ll be my first indie in 3 or 4 years, which is scary. But yeah, I think hybrid. It keeps me happy because I get control over everything on one side and on the other side, I get collaborative partners, so it’s the best of both worlds.
Alessandra Torre: I love that, and I do have to say that my traditionally published editors really elevated me. I learned so much from that process, just the editorial process. It made me a better writer. The other thing, just to touch on quickly to anyone watching is what Xio just said, you might not realize it, but when we sign contracts, we can’t self-publish a book that’s within a certain number of months before and after that traditional publishing book. So, that can cause us to have to be like, okay. A three-day window of time is there between these two publisher releases or whatever I can do with this book. So that’s something that is a consideration, you know when you’re looking at a traditional deal, but a lot of times that can be negotiated, and it is a different world than it was ten years ago. Ten years ago, it felt like the indies didn’t really have a say about anything, and now they’re much more used to working with us.
Xio Axelrod: Time is the biggest thing I would tell anyone who’s considering doing it as a hybrid, because not even just releases, but edits, getting edits on two books or working on edits on 2 or 3 books at the same time is…
Alessandra Torre: …head hopping in the worst sense. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much. It was so great to have you here. If they’re interested in reading your books, obviously they’re traditionally published, so they’re available everywhere. The Girls With Bad Reputations is now out. And if they’re interested in jumping right in, where do you suggest they start? With The Girl With Stars in Her Eyes?
Xio Axelrod: Yeah, absolutely. It’s my rock and roll fairy tale. It’s a good place to start to get a feel for my voice and to fall in love with my girls because they’re on a roll!
Alessandra Torre: I can’t wait. Thank you again and everyone. We’ll be back with another First Draft Friday in just a week. So, if you are not following us, please, like, subscribe, or join the group, and we’ll see you at a future First Draft Friday. Thank you so much to our audience. And thank you so much, Xio. It was great to have you.
Xio Axelrod: Thanks for having me. It was great being here.
