Indie Author Interview with Jordan Riley Swan
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted a new indie author interview, but I’m excited to be ending the drought by sharing this Q&A with Jordan Riley Swan. I’ve worked with him on several of his books, and they’ve been an absolute delight (the books themselves and getting to work with Jordan and his team at Story Garden). They have a unique writing and publishing process, which he details here. He also shares a ton of information and inspiration that I hope will be helpful for anyone who’s considering the self-publishing process. Check out the links at the end of this post to find his books and learn more about him!
When did you start writing, and what inspires you to write the stories you do?
Oh boy, I can’t even remember when I started writing. But I do remember when I started writing again. I went well over a decade (almost two) without putting a single word to page. I got caught up in the business I used to run (one that I had started specifically to give me time to write but had taken over my life), and my writing went by the wayside. I was on the road one day, coming back from auction and stopping to get a bite to eat when the first line of a novel hit me. One line became two, and then they became a paragraph. And at forty-plus years old, I sat there at a restaurant writing the first words of a novel on a laptop I was using for my work. At that moment I looked at the past fifteen years and realized that if I didn’t start now, I’d never do it. I finished that novel (which isn’t good enough to be published, but what the heck, it was done) and started actually taking the craft seriously for the first time in my life. I watched videos, read blogs, attended seminars and conferences, and slowly my work is getting better and better. Now I write full time and love my work. It’s never too late!
A lot of the stories I come up with are inspired by meldings of things. This idea meets that idea in my head, and a new idea is born. My mind is always going, “What would happen if…?” and many a tale has been born that way.
Did you choose to self-publish from the start, or did you seek traditional publishing first?
I’m actually hoping to be a hybrid. I’ve submitted one book to agents and was turned down across the board (though my dream agent asked for 50 pages, so that was a breathless six weeks!). I have one story that’s been in my mind for thirty-plus years. I don’t think my craft has gotten good enough to tell it, but when I do finally write it, I want to do so traditionally because I want to see it on the shelf of a Barnes and Noble or local library and know that it got there on its own and I didn’t donate it...
In the end, I knew that I was going to self-publish some of my works, as there are some stories I want to tell that I need complete control over. (I guess that makes me a bit of a control freak. Hahaha!) Every so often, I might submit another book to agents, though I haven’t done it yet. I work with multiple authors, so I need to have autonomy in my decisions.
I also love choosing covers on my own and working with freelance editors, since I was my own boss for nearly twenty years and owned my own small business, so I’m totally on the side of small business owners (and freelance editors are very much business people... whether they want to be or not, LOL.) [Editor’s note: Yup, it’s very much a small-business mindset!]
How many books have you self-published and in what genre(s)?
We’ve self-published three books so far. One in women’s fiction with romantic elements, one in the heist genre, and the most recent one is in the urban fantasy genre. The collaborative authors and I have four books in various stages of completion. Two are rom-coms, one is epic fantasy, and the last one is a fairy tale retelling.
On what platforms do you publish and why did you choose these?
I have been published wide before, but at the end of the day, I preferred Kindle Unlimited because I enjoyed watching pages being read. Plus, for every book sold on a non-Amazon platform, we were selling twenty times as many on Amazon itself.
We also have audiobooks, two of which are ACX exclusive, one of which is wide. We chose exclusivity because ACX gives review copies for free and that is vital with audiobooks (also, the royalty is higher going ACX exclusive.)
What is your process for feedback and editing before you publish?
Spaghetti. We throw it at the wall and see what sticks. OK, joking aside, a typical round of feedback and editing goes like this:
The first draft is finished and sent to our primary developmental editor (Diane Callahan of the Quotidian Writer), who is also our lead editor and traffic cop for all manuscripts. She decides where it goes next and who is in charge of that process.
The manuscript with Diane’s notes goes to the author of the first draft for revisions.
The draft with revisions comes to me for my review, then goes to the second developmental editor to get a new set of eyes on the manuscript. Their notes go to Diane, who decides what is kept and what is changed.
The manuscript goes to one of the two writers to execute Diane’s notes.
The book now goes to preliminary beta readers and comes back through Diane, who collates their comments and edits out any unnecessary tangents. The manuscript then comes to me for execution for beta comments.
Diane checks the changed parts of the book and then sends it to special readers for sensitivity and people with specific knowledge of locations and jobs mentioned in the book.
We make minor changes based on their comments, and the book is sent to the line and copy editor (the owner of the very blog I am currently writing this up for, Crystal Shelley of Rabbit with a Red Pen).
The hope is that because so many people have worked on it, most of the flaws have been ironed out, and the book is now ready for publication.
How do you market your books?
I would like to make another pasta joke about spaghetti and walls (because that is what marketing tends to feel like), but I will try to answer as thoroughly as possible. Are you ready? We hire Laurie Cooper of Pub-Craft to handle our marketing. I know that sounds like cheating, but sometimes it’s just best to have a professional do what they are good at.
How do you like to engage your readers?
Our number one way to engage the readers is through our various social media accounts. But we also run a YouTube channel that allows us to let our readers see behind the scenes.
What do you feel are the biggest advantages of self-publishing?
I would say the first and biggest advantage to self-publishing is the low barrier to entry. While that means there will be a large amount of absolute crap being published, it also means that hidden gems that would normally not make it to the market get their time to shine, as they are too niche for the traditional publishers. The second biggest advantage is keeping a lot more of the money from book sales. The third biggest advantage is absolute control from the first word to the cover on down.
What do you feel are the biggest challenges of self-publishing?
Getting noticed. With the ease of entry that we just discussed, it also means a glut of badly written, cranked-out detritus that fill the screen of your computer to the point where it all becomes a wash and the good stuff can fall under the radar. Or worse, enough bad self-published novels turn people off of any self-published novels so that they won’t take the risk unless you give them the book. Sometimes not even then.
What are the most valuable lessons you’ve learned as a writer?
I am going to break this down into two questions: “What’s the most valuable writing tip I have learned?” and “What is the most valuable thing I have learned as an author?” For writing, I would say that the book becomes a novel not in the writing but in the revising. For being an author, I would say that it’s never too late. I was in my early forties before I took the craft seriously, and I am getting better every day.
What tools or programs do you feel are the most useful in writing or publishing?
One of the most-used tools we have in our arsenal is Google Docs. For a free service, it is mind-blowingly useful to be able to work in real time with collaborative writers and with editors.
Another program that gets a lot of use around here is Scrivener. Back before I worked with other authors, it was my go-to program for plotting. It was designed specifically for writing novels, and you can tell. Word is great, Google Docs is better, but being able to break the story down into chapters and scenes and move them around as much as you want without having to cut and paste? *chef’s kiss*
It can be discouraging when a writer publishes a novel that doesn’t have commercial success. What advice do you have for writers who get discouraged?
Quit. Give up. You are no good, no one loves you, and no one wants you. Does that sound too harsh? Because that is what it feels like when the bad reviews come in or when a book that you expect to hit thousands of sales only sells four copies the first week. Know this: that’s not what is actually happening and no one is saying these things to you, despite how you feel in the moment. There are literally thousands of factors that may stop a book from being a commercial success. You cannot control all of that. All you can do is write the best book you can, market it the best you can afford to, and do your best not to take it personally. And here is a little hope for you: I listened to a few podcasts that featured successful, self-publishing authors. One thing they had in common was years and years of not having any success—but never stopping. So don’t you dare stop either. If your book sells one copy and becomes that person’s favorite book of all time, you did more with your work than most people will ever be able to claim.
Any last thoughts?
There is an old saying “Do what you love and you will never work a day in your life.” I would change that to “Write what you love and you will always be a success, even if it’s not a financial one.”
