At MahoganyBooks' Black Books Matter Festival, moderator Nekisha Elise Williams, author of The Seven Daughters of Dupree, speaks with indie authors T.L. Price and Sundiata Ramin about why they chose self-publishing and how it requires running a business. Price, an attorney and mother of three, began writing urban romantasy and paranormal romance to increase representation of Black men in fantasy and to publish quickly without a traditional gatekeeper; she stresses treating writing like a job with set hours, budgeting, professional covers, multiple editors, and learning the industry. Ramin, author of a Chuck Brown biography and a Go-Go Museum curator, describes using his bookstore, design, and marketing background to produce a high-quality book, meet a tight timeline, and distribute through major channels. Both discuss building audiences, using social media, and connecting with Black readers, while audience Q&A covers tips for young writers, marketing poetry, research and worldbuilding, and finding mentorship through author networks.
Takeaways:
- Self-publishing necessitates a professional approach; authors must treat their craft as a business and set dedicated work hours.
- Indie authors have the opportunity to represent marginalized voices in genres traditionally dominated by other demographics, fostering greater inclusivity.
- Building a loyal fan base is crucial; authors often find that their readership extends beyond initial expectations, reaching global audiences.
- Effective marketing strategies, including professional editing, eye-catching covers, and budget management, are essential for indie authors to achieve success in the competitive literary marketplace.
[00:00:00] I meet young writers, young aspiring writers all the time. And the first thing I tell them is you must treat this like a job. This is not a hobby. It will break your bank if you treat it like a hobby. I have dedicated work hours. Like I said, I have three sons. They know, do not come downstairs before 7 a.m. and ask me for breakfast. 7 a.m. I'm up at 5.30 a.m. and I'm working on my books before I get in my car and drive to work.
[00:00:27] And while I'm driving to work, I'm dictating my book for my hour commute. So it really is something that you have to treat as a business, set hours. You need to have a budget. And you also need to learn the business.
[00:00:45] We ready to get this thing rolling. How many y'all enjoying the day today? Black Books Matter Day. Yeah. My name is Mina Lagon, AKA the Ball Head Club. Black Books Matter Day. You're welcome. You got to give your socials and things, right? But it's a pleasure to be here and have been here all day with some amazing, amazing authors.
[00:01:16] The moderator of this talk is an author as well. We're going to get all into the bios. But honey, there was a talk before this one and the name of her book came up and the people went crazy. And so when I was reading her bio and going through it, she was like, well, you don't really need to say that. Maybe not. Maybe not. And then by the time we were done chatting, she had my phone and was updating her bio.
[00:01:38] So, so no. No, but it's important. I say that to say this is important, right? So while we talk about bios, there's a number of bios out on the internet about any number of writers or, you know, people who are creators and doing their thing. And it's important that we, we talk, we hear a lot about getting our flowers and whatnot, right? But we work hard on this stuff. So whatever awards you've gotten, whatever books you've written, put all that jank in it, put it all in there, right?
[00:02:05] And so I don't want to shortchange anyone. So if there are edits to be made by all means, edit away. We're going to get started. There are two authors that'll be in conversation with our moderator today. First up, we will be in with Sudiana Ramin. Did I say it correctly? Brother Sundiana is the author of Soul Searcher, Life and Legend of Chuck Brown.
[00:02:29] He is the voice behind the rhythm of the DC Go-Go Museum. Have y'all been over to Anacostia to the Go-Go Museum? If you have not, get your life. Okay. It's a good time over there. It's a rocking good time. Excuse me. It's a cranking good time. Okay. And he is the director of tours and curator at the Go-Go Museum here in Anacostia.
[00:02:54] And he has the privilege of immersing himself in the vibrant legacy of Chuck Brown, the undisputed godfather of Go-Go. Ramin's journey is one of compassion, education, and deep commitment to sharing the unique cultural history of Washington, DC with the world. We give it up for Brother Sundiana.
[00:03:14] T.L. Price is an award-winning and best-selling author who writes epic romantic fantasy, urban romant-acy. I don't know, girl. And paranormal romance. Oh, my. Known for fast-paced action, high-stakes, and steamy romance, she lives in Washington, DC area with her husband and three sons. All right. Give it up for T.L.
[00:03:44] And again, moderating this conversation today is Nikesha Elise Williams, who is the author of The Seven Daughters of Dupree. I love it. She's a two-time Emmy Award-winning producer, an award-winning author and producer and host of the Black and Published podcast. Yes?
[00:04:08] A native strategist by day and journalist always, she says her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Essence, and Vox. Nikesha is a Camilio Fiction Fellow and a DeGroote Foundation writer of Note Grantee. She's a Chicago native. Word to the... The Midwest is representing today. Okay? We've been popping today. And she currently lives in Florida with her family. Blessings to you all.
[00:04:37] Welcome to Black Books Matter Festival. Thank you very much. Thank you. You all enjoy the conversation? What's good, Black Books Matter Fest? All y'all that want to kiki about the daughters, we'll have to do that later. I'm in conversation right now. But Sundiata, T.L. Price, we are here to talk about indie publishing and self-publishing. Why did you all think that it was important for you all to tell your stories your way? And I'll start with you, T.L.
[00:05:07] So, I think how I would begin is by saying that I'm an avid reader. I read a lot of fantasy. I read a lot of sci-fi. And the first thing that I notice as a mother of three black sons is that there is very little representation of black men in our fantasy books. And let me tell you, romanticy is on the rise. Women are looking for fantasy books where there are handsome fantasy men.
[00:05:35] And I thought it was time for them to see what is a black man like in a fantasy world. So, I decided I was going to write it. And I'm impatient. I didn't want to query and do all of that to try and find a traditional publisher who might change my voice, change the story that I wanted to tell. So, I decided to publish on my own. And at the time, I thought, well, it may be read by maybe some friends, some sorority sisters.
[00:06:03] I now get checks from Japan, from all over the world. And it is amazing how an indie author's book can really reach the masses. That's my story. Sundiata. I'll try to say this in about three minutes. We have the time. The floor is yours. So, I'm very fortunate because coming from Washington, D.C., I go to college in New York City, the School of Visual Arts.
[00:06:32] In New York, I came into the knowledge of African culture, civilization. I go to Egypt with Dr. Yosef Ben Yekinen. I don't know how many of you know about, yeah, Dr. Ben. That's right. Dr. Ben, master teacher of history. I was 25 years old. When I came back from Egypt, there was nothing I thought we couldn't do as a people. So, at that time, my children's mother and I, we started a book business. So, I come from the book side of selling books. But like TL, I'm also an avid reader.
[00:07:00] So, because I was successful as a bookstore owner for almost 10 years, for me to write a book, I think it was much easier. The other side is because I understand marketing. I was a graphic designer for Atlantic Records designing album covers. I understand marketing. I understand advertising. So, I knew my cover had to be eye-catching. You know anything about advertising. You can have a great book, but if that cover is not catching, people are not going to buy that book.
[00:07:30] That was one thing. The other thing was about typesetting. So, I'm just telling you the technical side. But the inspiration to write the book comes from my love for Go-Go and my love for history and, of course, of Chuck Brown. I began to volunteer at the museum at its inception around February 19, 2020. And within months, I became the senior director, curator, and then eventually director of tours.
[00:07:57] And so, the book comes from the inspiration that no book was written about Chuck Brown prior to his rise to prominence as the Godfather of Go-Go. And so, I said, I need to write this book. I reached out to an elder who had known Chuck for years. He blessed me with the book and said, listen, I'm going to connect you with the people that's going to help you with this. And it happened. It took me five months to write. I would say 40 years of preparation.
[00:08:24] So, for those who don't know, I also have an indie publishing background. Before Seven Daughters of Dupree, I self-published five novels in a poetry collection. So, before making the jump to traditional publishing, TL, you mentioned that you didn't want to query. You didn't want to go through the traditional route to get your story out. And that has both advantages and some consequences. Do, in doing everything yourself, because that's what self-publishing is.
[00:08:53] You do everything yourself and you pay for it yourself, right? Before you get the check, you cut a check. In doing it that way to tell stories of urban romantic fantasy and to make sure that black men are represented in the genre, what has been the greatest gift to you on this journey? So, I would say the greatest gift really has been the fan base. I have some truly loyal fans.
[00:09:18] And they do a lot to really lift me up in all aspects of my life beyond just in the book world. I am an international attorney by trade. And for me, it is a relief to do something that is not living a day of controversy. So, in the lawyer world, I'm constantly in litigation. It's very combative.
[00:09:44] So, for me, it's a great reward to do something where it's bringing pleasure to other people. And I'll just tell you real quickly, I had a woman send me a letter a couple of weeks ago. She was in the UK. And she said that it had been years before she'd read a book. And then she read my book. And she said she, and at that point, she was in a dark place in her life. And she thought the character in my book who goes through a lot,
[00:10:13] it's a young black woman in D.C. who gets exiled to live with the gods. And she said that book really touched her heart. So, for me, I think one of the greatest rewards really is the stories that I hear from the people who are touched and moved by what's happening in my book. But it's hard. It's a lot of work when you're an indie author. And I'm sure we'll probably talk more about that. But it is, you know, there are pros and there are definitely cons as well.
[00:10:42] So, Sundiata, you mentioned that it's taken you 40 years of life experience and preparation before you could write your book. Your book is about the godfather of Go-Go Chuck Brown and about what is considered, like, a niche musical genre. Like, it's an outgrowth of so many other genres of house music, as we were talking about earlier on the live stream. And in traditional publishing, they usually want to see, like, short bits. So, they know they can get a book when there was the biography of Luther Vandross from 2013 written by Craig Seymour.
[00:11:12] Or the journalist Danielle Smith who wrote a book about black women in pop, Shine Bright, a few years ago. And then we always see, like, celebrity memoirs. Like, Brandy's memoir has come out. And, you know, for all the R&B girlies from the 90s, you know, we were all there for phases. But writing about a niche, it may be harder to find an audience. What do you want this audience of readers and music lovers and book lovers to know about Chuck Brown and Go-Go in D.C.?
[00:11:40] The most important thing about Chuck Brown's legacy is that he influenced so many people after he passed. Chuck has been gone 14 years. There hasn't been a documentary, no book written about him, about him prior to his prominence as the godfather. The museum really is the, we are the guardians of that culture. Ron Moulton, shout out to Ron Moulton and Dr. Natalie Hopkinson, who are the ones who are the founders of that museum, which comes out of the Don't Mute D.C. movement.
[00:12:09] As you all know, the museum is really built off of the gentrification and cultural erasure in D.C. When people decided they didn't want to hear about Go-Go anymore. So, the museum comes from that position. What I want people to know about Chuck Brown is that this man came from segregated south. You know, his family were sharecroppers. They came up through Richmond, Virginia, then eventually Washington, D.C., and then Fairmont Heights, Maryland. Chuck Brown left home at 13. By 18, he was in Lorton Penitentiary.
[00:12:39] He taught himself how to play the guitar while he was in prison. He came out of prison, never went back. At 26 years old, he went on to go with the Earls of Rhythm, Los Latinos, started his own band in 68, and then finally Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers. The people who came from his band have inspired music, whether it's R&B, pop. The most important person I'll mention to you is Chuckie Thompson.
[00:13:09] Chuckie Thompson was a Grammy Award winning producer. He produced Mary J. Blige's album, My Life. He did Biggie's album. He did Faith Evans' album. He started as a percussionist for Chuck Brown's band at 17 years old. That's one person. And to know that his pupil was Rich Harris, who produced Beyonce's song, Crazy in Love, and A. Marie's song.
[00:13:32] The three people who really, the three groups that I want you all to know also that really are the founding fathers of Go-Go are Rare Essence, EU, and Trouble Funk. Because Chuck Brown's band broke up in 79 to 84. So these young high school students asked him, can we use this beat? And Chuck said, yeah, you can use it, but just don't play my music. And what you have is five years of these young men becoming by far the golden age of Go-Go because it created the most original music.
[00:14:02] And in a long story short, I'll say that Chuck Brown's legacy continues with us, with the museum. And my pride comes from the children who are 11, 12, 13 years old. They don't know anything about Chuck Brown. By the time they leave, they understand who he is and what their responsibility is in preserving the music. So we've talked a bit about the writing and the contents of your books, but to self-publishing, to be an indie author is also to be a business owner. Yes. Is that something that you wanted to do?
[00:14:31] Because I call myself an accidental publisher, founder, and business owner. I just wanted to write, and then I ended up filing taxes and forming an LLC. So it started with UTL. You're a lawyer, so this may be in your wheelhouse. I am not. But in starting your business and really pursuing it as a business, not just as a creative, what does that look like for you as an indie author? What makes it worth it?
[00:14:57] So I definitely had an advantage that I'm a lawyer, so I was able to, you know, it didn't take much for me to figure out how to create a business around it. But I'm the oldest of four, so I'm always the one who's trying to reach back and help somebody else. So what I decided to do right from the beginning is I wanted to establish a press. So I wanted to have my own indie press.
[00:15:22] And what that means is that it gives me the ability to not only publish my books, but I can publish books for other people as well. So that is my ultimate goal is to not only publish for me, but to also publish for other young indie authors. So I created my business to have that ability. But it is a full-time job. So even though I'm a full-time attorney, I'm also a full-time writer.
[00:15:48] And so what it means is that you truly have to treat it like a job. And I meet young writers, young aspiring writers all the time. And the first thing I tell them is you must treat this like a job. This is not a hobby. It will break your bank if you treat it like a hobby. You really have to set. I have dedicated work hours. Like I said, I have three sons. They know, do not come downstairs before 7 a.m. and ask me for breakfast. 7 a.m.
[00:16:17] I'm up at 5.30 a.m. And I'm working on my books before I get in my car and drive to work. And while I'm driving to work, I'm dictating my book for my hour commute. So it really is something that you have to treat as a business, set hours. You need to have a budget. And you also need to learn the business.
[00:16:40] And I think that is the one thing that is really difficult for many indie authors is to take the time to also learn the business. So I keep track of what's going on with the trad authors, what they're writing, you know, what deals are being made. I follow Publishers Weekly. So I do also do that because I want to learn my craft. So you don't start off knowing everything. You learn as you go.
[00:17:05] One of the things that can be a hindrance for anybody that's trying to seek a deal with a publisher is they're going to put you on a list. Let's say they decide that they want to do your book. It may take three, four years before that book is published. I wasn't, that wasn't an option for me because I had to seize the moment. This is the 50th year of Go Go Music. Last year I said this book has to come out in 2026. I reached out to her sister, Malika Adaro, very famous. She's in Simon Schuster.
[00:17:35] I said, sister, if I publish this self-publish, how long will it take me to do it? She said, it's going to probably take 18 months. I said, no, I need it like six months. She said, well, good luck. I did that work that the sister said. I reached out to the experts, people who knew how to get me in the right. The first person I had to decide to deal with is Black Classic Press. I had to find a press company, Black-owned, that has reputable, if you don't know who that is, they're outside.
[00:18:01] Mr. Paul Coates, his son is Ta-Nehisi Coates, who is a Pulitzer Prize writer. Okay? Black Classic Press. I purchased my books from them. Remember, I was a bookstore owner. So I knew Paul Coates. I reached out to him. He said, look, I will help you. I showed him the book, and I'm not lying. My woman here can tell you what he said. He said, I've been in the business 40, 50 years. I've seen books come and go. He said, when I saw the cover, he said, it caught my eye.
[00:18:27] When I opened it up, he said, the typesetting, your research, your approach, he said, I just want to congratulate you because you have done an excellent job. Because when you see a self-published book, sometimes margins off, indentures, grammatical errors. I had three editors. I wrote the book five months, but I did my work. I connected with Canva for graphic design, do my own advertising, my own marketing.
[00:18:55] I connected with a sister out of Georgia. Her name is Shanine Young. She's going to love this plug. Books to Impact. They show you how to do a post-launch of your book, how to do your book signing, how to do a, I mean, I'm sorry, pre-launch your book signing, and then post-launch. And then use your book as a way of getting leverage to do book signings and lectures. So I'll be able to speak at the University of Maryland in January.
[00:19:21] I'm going to Norfolk for the African American Heritage Conference. So it's really opening doors for me because, like I said, with me being a historian, it really is my area. And so what I want to say, yes, clap for that, clap for that. For what I want to say for anyone who's an aspiring writer, whether you self-publish, you publish with a university press, a midsize press, or you try to go big five traditional press. I've published at every level. I formed my own publishing company.
[00:19:50] I published myself, and then I published eight other authors under my own company. Publishing now doesn't have the same stigma that it used to, especially self-publishing. It's just a different path. So you don't have to look at your work and think that, oh, because I didn't get to a traditional big five Simon & Schuster HarperCollins kind of publisher, that it's not good enough. Mahogany Books is a black bookstore. It's an indie bookstore.
[00:20:14] As long as your book is able to be searched in their databases, and I think they usually use Ingram to order their books from, then your books can be carried in local stores. I made sure that as an indie author that my local bookstores and wherever I was anywhere in the country could carry my book and that libraries could get them too. And so you have to think about different publishing paths and then also the amount of work that you want to do. Because as an indie author, as Sundiata just said, you are writing the book. You are getting the book edited. You cannot edit it yourself.
[00:20:43] You cannot edit your book yourself. I repeat, you cannot edit your book yourself. One more time for the cheap seats. You cannot edit your book yourself. Touche. Okay? You probably need two editors, a developmental editor and a copy line editor at that. That's another story. But you're hiring that person. You're typesetting your book or you're paying to have it done. You're doing your cover or you're paying to have it done. And you have to make sure that the spine and the margins and everything is correct.
[00:21:07] Because one of the things that I was very adamant about and that both of you seem to be adamant about is that you want to hold up that self-published book and nobody know that it was self-published. There it is. That it was funded by you. Like my goal was that when I held up my book that I self-published, it could stand next to any book in Mahogany Books, in Barnes and Nobles, on Amazon, anywhere. That's right.
[00:21:29] And so that is a level of labor and work and intentionality and being meticulous to a fault that not everybody wants to do. What keeps you going in this work when you could be doing other things or just be doing the law? Because, like, that's a whole profession. So I'm going to tell you, for me, my husband will come to me in a heartbeat and say, are you making a profit? Are you making a profit?
[00:21:58] And so every dime that I put in my books, I want to make sure that at the end of the day, I'm making a profit. And it goes directly back to the fact that you need to have a professional cover. You need to have multiple editors take a look at that book. It needs to be a professional product that will make people want to buy more books. Now, I specialize in series. So I write, you know, I have one series. It has five books in there. I have another book that's the first book of a duology.
[00:22:28] And so if I want people to buy the second book, I need to make sure that I have a really good product. So that's one of the things that is extremely important in my process. It's so beautiful because the inspiration comes, again, from the children. And for me, I'm already starting on the next book. And when I say children, I'm talking high school. I got to get them before they go to college, get them early about this music because now they're going off. They're going to hear hip hop. They're going to hear all kinds of styles.
[00:22:58] And they don't have an appreciation for where they come from. So if they know what go-go is, and the go-go is a fusion genre that draws from the African Latin rhythm, but also jazz, blues, funk, soul, hip hop, and gospel. Chuck Brown incorporated everything. We call Chuck Brown the Luther Vandross to go-go because once he's seen your song, it's not yours anymore. Right? And so with understanding his background, my impact comes from that.
[00:23:26] The other thing is I think it's important that she mentioned about Ingram distributors. One of the things that was kind of a – I was a little upset about, I wanted to use black distributor too. Now, I got Africa World Press out of Baltimore. But they told me if you want to get your book in the school system or in the libraries, you got to go through a major distributor. Now, this is how sophisticated it is. It's before you would send your books to the distributor. Oh, no, they're going to print the book for you now.
[00:23:54] They're going to take your manuscript. They're going to put the cover and do it themselves. So now you almost have to buy the books from them in order to get the books if you didn't do it this way. So it's complicated, but you got to be on top of it. And I want you all to do your research, know your market, know the people that you're writing for. Most importantly, I love the people that I write for. So that's what makes it easy for me because I understand what it means when you get this knowledge, how we say when you know better, you do better.
[00:24:25] And when you know better in this climate, you certainly can prevail. T.L., you talked a little bit earlier about not seeing the kind of representation you wanted to see in the fantasy genre. There's been a lot of talk, if anybody's following book threads the last few days, about a certain fantasy franchise with a major film coming out in January about Children of Blood and Bone, what the author told me, I'd get me.
[00:24:52] But beyond the Children of Blood and Bone series, I'm thinking of Ladarian Williams' young adult series that's come out the last couple of years, Blood at the Root and Bones at the Crossroads, that features a black male protagonist in a very fantasy world, fantasy university. And before these major series, you were also filling that gap.
[00:25:14] What does it mean to you to be able to see authors succeed in a genre that most people don't associate with black folk? It's remarkable, and it helps to open doors for me. I get invited to many book events around the world, and even book events where they want to sponsor me.
[00:25:37] And I think now that we're starting to see more publishers say, hmm, there is an audience. There are black readers who are interested in fantasy and sci-fi. When people hear sci-fi, they get scared. Because immediately they're thinking robots, and they're thinking that I can't relate to that. No, there's so much more beyond what people traditionally think is fantasy and sci-fi.
[00:26:07] And so now that we have these additional books out there, it's opening doors for Andy Office. And let me tell you, there is a market. There is a huge market. But unfortunately, it's really hard for those books to get into bookstores. I go to many book events where I am the only black author there, where most of the audience is a non-black audience.
[00:26:32] And I'm trying to convince people to buy a book where the main female and male are blacks. But it helps that there are more of our books now in the fantasy and romancy genre that are mainstream, that many cultures are seeing these books and picking up the books and starting to read them. So it's helping me to see many more of these books starting to come out. And I will say this. My middle son is 21.
[00:27:01] And he reads fantasy romance. And I really love that because he's been able to go and see that it's not just, it's not like just a little silly little romance book. It actually has a lot of teeth to it. It's an epic romance. It's very interesting books. So I'm really glad that we have a lot more happening. And we need more because let me tell you, the few that you just mentioned, there are so many more.
[00:27:27] We are so far behind the number of white authors who are getting book deals, getting movie deals. Like Twilight, Hunger Games, all those books are out there. We've had books out there. We're just now getting a chance to get movie rights. We're just now getting that. But we've been out there for a long time. But it takes every single one of you to go to your libraries, ask for our books. Come to these type of events, buy our books.
[00:27:56] Tell your friends, buy our books. If we don't buy our books, trust me, no one else is going to buy them. And leave reviews and tell people about them. Tell people to tell people to tell people to get a book. Sundiata, when we were talking earlier on the live stream, you mentioned that you were a bookstore owner. And you had four stores in four number of years. You're now self-publishing and you formed your own publishing company. How have you seen publishing change over your years of doing this cultural work? Understanding when I owned the bookstores, there was no internet, no social media.
[00:28:26] And so with that, it makes it much, much easier and effective. I can post something daily. And that's what I do. Creative advertisement. Not just saying where I'm going to be, but I give the music of Chuck's music. Certain music that a lot of people didn't know about Chuck in the 70s and the early 80s. And so what I do is, I see that as a one, as media. The way you can advertise.
[00:28:51] The other thing I think I see is it's a challenge for us because they said reading has declined by 40%. The challenge is this phone. And so many of us are not reading. So I just realized that we got to just do more. As the sister said, we got to promote black authors in the libraries. Go to those book signings. Go to those book discussions and tell your story. Let them tell their story and hear that story and share it. So I think that changed.
[00:29:20] Bookstores, when I was selling, you had Karibu books. How many of you remember Karibu books out of D.C.? That was one of the biggest black-owned bookstores in the country. We were second. Mine was Ramen Books out of New Jersey. And what we did was Octavia Butler we brought. We brought, oh yeah, Octavia Butler, yes. Oh yeah. Sci-fi in the 90s that I knew about. We brought Elin Harris. We brought Eric Jerome Dickey. Sonia Sanchez.
[00:29:49] See, these people I knew about, and I was only in my 20s. So for me to remember this and recall how that process happened, it made it much easier for me to sit down, be able to write, be able to focus on my game plan, my audience, and get the book out. So I can say it really has changed with the access to social media and my ability to post what it is. I have control, full control of it. All right. I'm going to take questions from the audience in one moment, but I'm going to ask you all one final closing question for me.
[00:30:19] What in this, you know, we hear Black Books Matter Fest. It's the third annual festival for mahogany books. What has been your greatest joy of connecting with black readers? So I will tell you, before I came in here, I sold out of my book one of both of my series. Now, hopefully by the time I get outside, my son has bought me some more books, okay?
[00:30:46] But the thing that I love about being here is to see so many beautiful book readers. It is absolutely amazing to see all of you, and all of you, your bags are full. Yes. And you're coming to me, you're saying, I probably shouldn't buy one more book, but I'm going to buy one more book. You know, it's so important. And what mahogany is doing for our community is vital. It truly is vital for our children to be able to go into bookstores.
[00:31:15] Like you said, many people are online now, but there's nothing like the feel of a paperback or a hardcover, the smell of a book to lay in the bed and read a book. And it's so important. And I actually think, like many things in life, I think we are going to circle back. I think we are in this, you know, era where everybody's on their phone. Everybody's, you know, watching, you know, Netflix. I think we are going to circle back because people are going to need quiet time.
[00:31:43] Mahogany books is where you can go when you want your quiet time, when you want a book to read. And so, an event like this, it truly is vital. And again, just look at how many people showed up this year. It's absolutely phenomenal. And the panels that they've put on. This is an opportunity for us all. So, if anyone has any questions, I don't know if there's a mic to go around. And let me say this real quick.
[00:32:08] The fact that I'm a first-time writer, first-time author, for them to invite me to speak and to be a part of this and also to do a podcast is commendable because they didn't know me from Adam. They saw me promote my book. I sent an email, told them who I was, and they decided to put me on. So, I really appreciate what they've done for me with the promotion of my book. I'm going to stand up.
[00:32:36] First of all, I want to thank my friend for bringing me out to this event on today because I just wanted to sit in the house. And I was not going to be reading. But to you, is it Sundi? Sundiata. Sundiata. Thank you. Wind me up, Chuck. Okay, I'm from the culture of go-go. And, you know, back in the day, in the 80s, people don't really know that that culture of go-go kept us out of a lot of trouble. Yes, it did.
[00:33:06] Club LaBerne, 10 to 6 in the morning. Come on now. People don't really know that. So, I'm interested to hear and read your book to see what you're really writing about. Because, like I said, Trouble Funk, Chuck Brown, EU, that was the culture back then. And it kept us out of a lot of trouble. Being in the neighborhood of Palmer Park, Maryland. Yes. And going to the Club LaBerne and having a safe haven where Chuck would just, you know, keep our minds occupied all night long.
[00:33:34] Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers, should I say. With Leroy playing that horn. But, so, I want to thank you. I would never have known about the book, but now I'm here and I think I'll buy the book. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Y'all going to make me run off the pizza. I had to say amen. There we go. My name is Jason. I'm 16.
[00:34:01] And I'm writing a book myself and it's also a science fantasy story. You mentioned how, like, people these days don't like to read, especially younger generations, which is sad because I've loved to read since I was a little kid. Um, you also mentioned how, like, there aren't a lot of voices if, like, black men and black boys in sci-fi and fantasy.
[00:34:31] And also another thing I noticed is that there's not a lot of people you hear, especially in the, uh, 13 to 15 range. You'll either have middle grade books who are all about 12-year-olds and, or you'll have young adult books that are about 16 and 17-year-olds doing really edgy and freaky and mature stuff that most teenagers are not doing, as I can confirm, as a 16-year-old. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:35:00] So, um, I've been working on this book since I was 13, but I was, wanted to ask, um, what are some tips that you have on writing your own books? And not just from Mrs. Price, but about all three of you? Mm-hmm.
[00:35:19] Because I want to start, where, I want to start publishing, like, chapters online first before I actually, like, I am planning to self-publish the book as, like, a full-length novel so, like, people can read it physically. Yeah. But, um, I just wanted to ask on, like, what are some tips that you have on writing that I can maybe have, especially for, uh, the genre that I'm writing in?
[00:35:44] Um, to keep going, the last book that I published by, uh, an outside group was actually a book written by 14, 15, 16-year-olds. It's called The Book of Lost and Magic. They were in an after-school program where I live, and they wanted to write a book, and I knew their teacher, and they wrote and illustrated this book on their own. And I told them to write the book they wanted to write, write the story that they wanted to write. And then afterwards, I worked with them to get, to edit it and to have it professionally edited.
[00:36:12] And then their art teacher, um, did their cover. And these kids had a book to show for it at the end of, you know, their program, their after-school program. So, the first thing that you want to do when you're writing is to write. Write the book of your heart. Don't let anybody tell you any differently, um, about what your story has to be, what it should be, how it should go. It's your story. Tell the story that you want to tell, and know it inside and outside, backwards and forwards, and all the way around.
[00:36:37] So that when you do invite other people to collaborate with you, as far as publishing it, you know what you will and you won't change. You mentioned that you want to start by publishing stories, uh, or publishing certain chapters. A lot of authors have started that way. I interviewed the author, um, Regina Black, who wrote the romance novel August Lane. She started with LiveJournal and doing fan fiction. Lots of authors start writing fan fiction.
[00:37:00] You can use a platform like Substack or Medium or LinkedIn for the old heads, um, and publish whatever you want to do and begin to build not only your writing skill, because your craft and your discipline will get better by publishing online, but then you can also build your audience and your voice so that they will be there and be, their appetites will be wedded for what you do next. So there's not one way to go about writing and there's not one way to go about publishing.
[00:37:24] And you can find success online through blog spaces or Substack spaces, through social media spaces. You could do it all at home in the dark and then decide to one day just pop out and be like, hey, I have a book. Whatever you want to do, but you have to do it from your heart. And then as T.L. said, think of it like a job. Like, you have to be disciplined about it. Because there are going to be times where you don't want to write and you could do a million and one other things. And so if you're this disciplined now or this adamant about it at 16, I'm looking forward to see what you do next.
[00:37:57] I think she answered that question for you. Thank you all for being here. Jamal Russell, J.S. Russell, self-published author, 14 books now. Come on, brother. Congratulations. One of you say that you did poetry. Thank you. Thank you. One of you said that you did poetry, right? Yes. So I'm very interested because out of those 14 books, nine of them are poetry from basically chronicling.
[00:38:24] I may have said that word wrong, but my journey while I was incarcerated. So I'm definitely looking for like the tools as to how best to market that because I've, like you said, found myself with an LLC and everything when I came out here. So I'm doing everything by myself. And so I would like to know your advice. And always, you also said something about imprint or impact something. I wanted that to know. Book impact. Books to impact. Books to impact. Books to impact. I needed that for my notes. Yes, sir. Okay.
[00:38:53] I can give you that information about Shanine's business. Okay. Thank you. You said you were formerly incarcerated. Are you familiar with the poet Reginald Dwayne Betts? Okay. So then I would, like, think about who is your, who is the audience for your book? Who are you talking to? Are you talking to young black men? Are you talking to people who are still incarcerated, formerly incarcerated people? Are you talking to the wider system impacted community?
[00:39:22] Because one of the ways that you could do your poetry and get your work out is to think about those networks and then think about what they need. So one of the things that Dwayne talks about when he did his foundation, Freedom Reads, is making sure that people who are inside and who are incarcerated have access to books. Part of my day job, I work with an organization called FICGN, which stands for the Formerly Incarcerated College Grad Network. And they are, their entire mission from the executive director is to make sure that people
[00:39:52] who are locked up, who are incarcerated, have access to education and have access to higher education. And the ED talks about, you know, getting his, starting the process of going to school while he was incarcerated and then coming out and getting his bachelor's and then his master's degree from Rutgers University in that his entire network is filled with formerly incarcerated people who are no longer being identified by their incarceration status. You hear me keep saying the words, formerly incarcerated instead of convicted felon.
[00:40:20] That is intentional to make sure that my language matches the humanity of the people that I'm talking about. So for you specifically, you have an audience that you could reach with your work that you can start with. Start where, with the people that you didn't see represented in the work that you were doing, in the life that you lived. Where were you that led to your incarceration? And where are you now that you can speak to them and reach them with your poetry, right? You can start there and then use other marketing tools like Sundiata mentioned from Books to
[00:40:48] Impact to go ahead and get, to do your work wider. You can also use social media to it, to your advantage. I don't know if you're familiar with the poet Jericho Brown, but some days he'll pop up on Instagram and he'll be like, hey, I'm Jericho. I want to read you a poem. And he reads the poem online and films it and posts it. You can do some of the same thing. The poet Rudy Francisco came out of Slam Poetry and then he published his books through the Slam Poetry Group, Button Poetry. Think about the author Julian Randall, who now writes YA fiction.
[00:41:19] He started as a slam poet. So there are a lot of different ways to get your work out there beyond traditional publishing measures. So start with the audiences that you want to reach. Start with the networks where those audiences live and who they're connected to. And for you doing poetry, you can post some of your poems online, the ones that have already been published or their works that you are working on and that you're workshopping and you don't mind sharing. You can do those as well and then begin to build your audience that way using all the tools to your advantage. Does that answer your question? Okay.
[00:41:56] Yeah, we need to do. Okay. And we're still signing books outside. I'll be signing on his side. First of all, I just want to say thank you, all three of you for sharing so much information with us. We really appreciate it. My question is specifically for TL. I'm a nonfiction girly by nature. Yeah. The eldest daughter type thing, I guess, for me. So I have been dabbling into fiction and I struggle by chapter, writing chapter five or
[00:42:25] six. By six, I'm like, because my thing is, my question to you would be how much research are you doing, if any, to create these make-believe places or people? Because there has, not has to be, but I feel like there's a bit of realism that goes into it. So I just kind of want to know from your experience what that looks like. So two things.
[00:42:51] So first, in my family, my mother reads, but the rest of my siblings and my extended family, they do not read. And so it was important to me when I wrote my first book, I wanted to write a book that I thought that they could relate to. And so in my first book, the main character is a woman that's born and raised in Washington, D.C. And then she gets exiled. And so it was easy for them to understand how she went from being just like them in Washington, D.C.
[00:43:20] to what happens when she gets into a fantasy world. So I was able to take them step by step so that they could relate to the book. And that's important because I think sometimes people can get overwhelmed if there's a lot of world building in a fantasy book, especially for your first introduction. So it was important to me to write a book that was really relatable. So that series is called Exile No More. It's one of the few where the main character comes from Washington, D.C. in a fantasy book. So that's very relatable.
[00:43:50] Now, second, I have another book where now that book is more for people who are heavily into fantasy. They want to be completely immersed into a new world. They are tired of what's happening on TV in Washington, D.C. They are tired of hearing about all, you know, our government, right? They want to escape. So for that audience, I wrote a book about dragons, dragon riders and vampires.
[00:44:18] Now, you can relate to the vampires, but can you relate to a dragon that can talk back to you? That can tell you off? That you might fall in love with? So, again, so to answer your question with the world building, you really have to think about the audience that you're targeting each book to because you can have one where it's just a light world building and one where there is a lot of world building. Now, there are different genres of fantasy. There are some that are historical.
[00:44:46] So I have a friend, Indy Jones, she writes a lot of historical fantasy. So she wrote a book about Harriet Tubman, where Harriet Tubman is, she's enslaved by dragons. And so she's in a fantasy world. She had to do a lot of research, though, on Harriet Tubman. And so when you're reading fantasy books, you will find that there is a lot of things that you can relate to. But you may just, in the first couple of chapters, just kind of take it slow.
[00:45:17] It's usually by the time you've gotten to maybe chapter seven or eight that you're like, okay, I get it. I know where I am. And I think that's why, for me, I never DNF a book, which means I did not finish a book. And that's part of it is because I'm nosy. I want to know, what was this author thinking? Like, where were they going? And by the time I get to the end of the book, I'm like, oh my God, it's so good. I want the next book. But that's also because sometimes it does for fantasy books.
[00:45:45] You really have to go quite a few chapters to understand the people and the world. So I hope that answered your question. Hello, how y'all doing? First and foremost, thank you so much to the black talent in the room that's educating the passionate black other talent in the room.
[00:46:14] My question was inspired by T.L. Price. I did hear the young man who was 16 said he writes fantasy. I'm also 31 years old, a black gentleman who enjoys writing urban fantasy, or I like to call it. What do you recommend for someone who's diving into that as far as like, they may not have people, you just mentioned that are writers, like to read in their family. So they may not be inspired to have community that will like push them to do that.
[00:46:41] How do you recommend that they see mentorship or to get people in their corner to push them toward the first step in getting published or to get their work seen? So I would say that's one of the true benefits I think you do get from indie authors when you go to events like that. Because I can tell you, I know that me and many other indie authors, we are more than welcome to talk to you. So I have no problem. I give everybody my email. You can email me. I will talk to you. I will explain to you my process. I will give you advice.
[00:47:10] It's really important. But it's creating that network. And so you're at that stage where you want to have a network of other writers. Because we're going to push you to keep doing what you're doing. We're going to push you to not give up when things get, you know, when you're tired or you just don't know what's the next step. So it's really important. But what I have found, and this I will say, it doesn't matter what race, if it's a male or female, many authors are more than willing to talk to you.
[00:47:38] And so don't be afraid to just walk up to an author and say, hey, I'm writing a book. This is what I'm thinking about. Can I reach out to you for advice? Many authors are willing to talk to you. I get Instagram direct messages from people all the time. I'm more than willing to give back. Thank you. All right. Are there any more questions? All hearts and minds clear?
[00:48:09] You all will be signing books, right? So from here, thank you all so much for this. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you so much.