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Welcome to the Tuesday Telegrams, a semimonthly newsletter from award-winning author Naseem Jamnia. You're currently reading a writing-related Telegram, where I update you on projects, offer behind-the-scenes looks, delve into craft, and other publishing and writing topics.

For today's Telegram, I thought I'd share a little bit about the experiences of traditionally publishing with a small press versus a Big 5.

My debut, The Bruising of Qilwa, is an adult fantasy novella. Novellas are a tricky space to publish in because while people tend to enjoy them, publishers find them risky, so there aren't a lot of Big 5 imprints who will seriously consider novellas. That's why Tordotcom (an imprint of Macmillan) has such a strong corner on the market; you'll frequently them sweep novella categories in award circuits.

But there are small publishers who consider novellas, including the press that published mine. A small press out of San Francisco, Tachyon has been around for thirty years. That they've made it this long is a testament to the strength of the books they put out—6-10 titles, keeping them in the "small press" category.

Tachyon has a small team: three editors (one of whom is the managing editor and does more project management as a result), two publicity people, and an in-house book designer. This means that Tachyon authors get to know the team very, very well, and that the Tachyon team gets to know their authors pretty well, especially if you're able to go out to San Francisco to do events. And at every event in the Bay Area, the members of the press who lived there came out. Every one!

I got the cover for Qilwa almost a full year in advance of publication, and we had our marketing meeting nine months in advance. We had ARCs printed about six months in advance, and publicity really picked up three months before the book came out. I had at least three and up to five marketing meetings (I honestly can't remember) with my publicist, agent, and independent brand manager (a friend of mine who I hired with my own money, Andrea Guevara; she's fabulous and I highly recommend doing her mini-brand consultation even if you can't hire her for a broader brand examination).

This is the benefit of going with a small press—the individualized attention and care. I loved working with my team at Tachyon. We were also able to retain a decent number of sub-rights, like translation rights and audio, and sold both audio and Spanish translation rights at auction.

The tradeoff? It's a small press. My advance was only a few thousand dollars, although the benefit of that is I earned out within a year and now make royalties. Qilwa isn't stocked in stores like Barnes & Noble unless someone requests it. Many indie bookstores won't have it in stock unless they've got a big focus on speculative fiction, and then some. Tachyon, and many indies, only buy one book at a time rather than acquire multiple or a series.

My advance at Simon & Schuster was five times the amount. (Because I worked with a packager for The Glade, though, they got the majority of the advance; I made about the same as I did for Qilwa.) Simon & Schuster has name recognition, even if the imprint I'm with, Aladdin, has less so. Is The Glade stocked at Barnes & Noble? No, but that's a conversation about Barnes & Noble's stocking only authors with a "track record." Still, being able to say I'm a Simon & Schuster author gets me credibility and taken seriously in a way that being a Tachyon author didn't, especially for the average person.

But of course, Aladdin publishes dozens of books a year, let alone the hundreds out of Simon & Schuster Children's, and thousands out of Simon & Schuster. I got the cover for The Glade a few months before the book came out, and never had a formal cover reveal planned. I managed to get a marketing meeting about a month before the book came out and was told that middle grade has a long tail and that putting in effort beforehand is a waste of time. There may never be an audiobook version (the Big 5 almost always reserves audio rights because they have in-house audio teams), and there may never be translations of it.

Of course, this is the life of a midlist author. Had I been a lead title, I would have gotten multiple marketing meetings, social media boosts, interviews, a cover reveal. All of that might not amount to much—I've seen it happen to friends who were lead titles at Big 5 imprints and had their books fly under the radar despite it. But there's no doubt that the name recognition is part of the appeal.

If you go down the path of traditional publishing, you and your agent should discuss whether a publisher who offers is the right home for that specific project. (Indeed, you should actually have this discussion during the submission process, when your agent sends you the editors they're planning on submitting to.) So much of the experience depends on specifics, and for many people, being a midlister at a Big 5 is something they'd rather do than being one of a few titles at a small press—and for others, it's the opposite.

Small presses, especially those without a long history and stellar reputation, can be a gamble. But so can going with a Big 5, where your book may never earn out its advance and will be buried in the many books published by that imprint. There is no one size fits all in publishing. As my agent says, it's a marathon, not a sprint.

10 Years of Sword & Kettle Press

The Kickstarter for the ten year anniversary anthology of my tiny press Sword & Kettle is now live! We're at 90% FUNDED!! and been named a #ProjectWeLove. I am tentatively hopeful that we'll hit our funding goal and then some to cover the full cost of the project, and maybe even pay ourselves as editors!

Upcoming Event: Beyond the Ban with Adib Khorram THIS THURSDAY!

My dear friend Adib Khorram (whose latest YA novel One Word, Six Letters came out recently, and it's a doozy of a book) asked me to join him on a panel moderated by Ashley Hope Pérez to go "beyond the (book) ban" and discuss craft. Adib's work is frequently banned, and he's also part of the national team for Authors Against Book Bans, and I'm the AABB Nevada chapter co-leader and a pro-library activist in the state. This is bound to be a good conversation focused on writing kidlit by some of the brightest in the industry!

​You can also sign up for the United to Read Project to receive information about defending the right to read.​

While you're at it, please consider calling your reps (or sending via the Resistbot form, or using this ALA link, or calling with this link) to fight against HR 7661! Here's a thread of actions you can take!​

The talk is this Thursday, April 30, 4:30pm PT/7:30pm ET. Registration should be free. The Zoom link is here!​

Writing Updates

After buckling down to write 65k words in two weeks and then spend a week doing light edits, I turned in the draft of my middle-grade fantasy to my packager! I am really proud of how everything turned out and am hopeful they'll think it needs minimal work before going on submission. I didn't do my intensive revision process yet, but rewriting it from scratch did a lot of that work. Hopefully, I can share details from this project soon!

I also got the good news that I was accepted into a weekend workshop intensive for professional novelists! I haven't been in a workshop as a participant since the MFA and have never done a full-novel workshop. I'm nervous and excited to have strangers read this book of my heart (though I hope to have many in the future), one set forty years after the events of The Bruising of Qilwa in Firuz's home country of Dilmun.

​Solidarity Corner​

If you have organizations, causes, or mutual aid requests you'd like me to spotlight here, please send those links my way. We get through these things when we do so together. You can click the header for the LinkTree.

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