Mina V. Esguerra's Blog, page 11

Currently #4

1. I’m always thinking of new projects for our books, but periodically as I’m reminded that our world is on fire and our systems are failing us, I end up pausing those so I can do other things. That new thing this week is putting my Chic Manila series bundle on pay-what-you-want (minimum $5) on Gumroad, so people can get 14 of my books and stories while I donate all the proceeds to friends/public school teachers A and P, because their schools are opening to full-time face-to-face in a pandemic, and they have no government support for regular classroom repairs and supplies, nor do they have substantial government support for the new things they need because they’re teaching during a pandemic. It is a mess, and we should be angry, and it’s hard to think about promo projects for books while this is in my head. Donate and get my entire series here: gum.co/chicmanilaseries.

2. I’ve helped publish a new YA romance (under #RomanceClass Flicker) called “Feels Like Home” and you can start reading preview chapters on Wattpad here: https://www.wattpad.com/1259788806-feels-like-home-chapter-1. For the past couple of years I’ve found it great for my new releases to have a Wattpad preview (or complete upload there alongside pre-orders). I’m active on various platforms, but to reach out to Filipino readers, Wattpad is where we should be. It is, by now, a diverse enough audience and even my books with 40-year-old characters have readers there. For YA lalo na.

3. I started watching Darna. Eventually I feel I will get buried under a backlog because I cannot keep up with a daily show, but it is giving interesting commentary about human villains alongside alien ones.

Also started watching Sleep With Me. This is a limited series and I’m more likely to finish!

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[Publishing Advice] On printers

In Part 2: Printer pros and cons (posted in 2014), I go through various printing options and then give cost estimates for each.

Today, I really will just recommend print-on-demand. Especially if you’re self-publishing in the Philippines. Especially if you’re doing this for the first time. It’s 2022 and people have gone through a lot! It’s not their responsibility to buy our books, but if they want to, we should make it easy for them (and easy for us).

My books, printed by JMD Copy and Print Shop in the Philippines.

In the interest of making it easy for readers and author/publishers, I no longer recommend a large first print order, even if it seems like a thing to aspire to. Create your print books in small and manageable batches. My batches and orders are 20 books at a time (more or less), because that’s what I can personally manage and does not stress me out. Scale up and order more only after you fulfill your first small orders, and know for sure that the books were printed correctly and everyone is happy with their copies.

Do not print 100+ copies if you’re going to spend several years worrying about how to sell them. Do not print 100 copies if you do not have 100 buyers already. Print-on-demand exists and is wonderful. This allows you to print only what you need, or only what was ordered, and you can also make changes to the book if you want to change anything. (Printing 100 copies in a rush means an error that gets through is present in that entire batch. That is stressful and so unnecessary.) If your book is in English and you can use Amazon KDP or a similar service to make a print book available worldwide, do that. (Some “publishers” offer to do this…please if you have the time just go direct and do it yourself. Or read up on the “publisher” so you know what they’re really doing or not doing for you.)

I don’t recommend printing a large batch because that often requires a lot of work (to “market”, to pick up, to pack and ship) and a lot of money up front. It does sound like you’re getting a good deal because the cost per copy seems smaller…but you did not need to spend that much or do that much. If any of your sales were generated by putting pressure on family and friends to support you, it isn’t going to be a sustainable project either.

So yeah, in 2022 my updated advice is, go for the least stressful and costly option. If you’re just starting, let yourself learn through small and manageable print batches, and only print more when you’re ready to take on the additional work and you know the book is the best it can be. Work with printers/people who will print the number of copies you need, and not talk you into printing more if there are no buyers or readers for it yet.

And again if you’re self-publishing, remember that a printer is just a printer. You are still the publisher.

PS if this doesn’t sound right for your situation because you know you need 1,000 copies printed and shipped then great! You need a team and a registered corporate entity. This doesn’t necessarily apply to you. You probably want advice for a corporate partnership, which will be the topic of a future post.

This is how I publish.

This is an ongoing blog project where I return to my Publishing Advice column on Wattpad and add updated commentary! If this was helpful to you and/or if you want me to continue this, you can buy me a buko pie.

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[Publishing Advice] An intro to this updated version

I have an account on Wattpad (MinaVE) and it’s somewhat popular, but not exactly for my fiction. In 2014 I started posting advice for writers (mostly publishing-related) over there, and in Tagalog/English. I always try to be on the side of authors throughout this publishing journey, and over the years even though I’ve worn many hats in this industry, I am still primarily an author, and will help fellow authors.

The Wattpad “advice column” is me speaking very casually, responding as fast as I can to questions I get on Wattpad and social media. There’s always lots to talk about, and I’ve posted over 80 chapters by now. Periodically I think about updating the advice and putting it somewhere, and I think my website is a good place for it. Still accessible, will be more search-engine friendly, and going over this with fresh eyes could mean better advice or just more relevant today, in 2022.

Do Filipino authors need advice really? They did, they do. Here’s my post about the popularity of the advice column in 2014. And here are the recent stats as of today:

Over 447K+ page views!

Currently the largest age group reading it are 18 to 25 year olds, who are probably thinking of publishing their stories or have been approached by a publisher already. Over 90% of my readers are located in the Philippines.

There are so many Filipino authors. And every year I check the stats, it’s the 18 to 25 year olds who are there looking for publishing advice. New authors are joining the creative community every single year, and this is just the stats from one online community. I know Filipino creators are present and thriving in other platforms too. It’s amazing really.

I started my advice column with a warning. Part 1: Do you want your book in bookstores? Plus Copyright. It used to be the dream for many young authors to see their books in bookstores, and they ended up signing over/selling copyright to their books in exchange. By interacting with Bebang Siy and FILCOLS (Filipinas Copyright Licensing Society)*, I learned that we did not have to give up copyright just to be published. We can sign contracts with publishers, and still keep copyright. We don’t have to agree to “shared copyright” either.

Of course each contract offer and case could be different, but the advice was directed to Wattpad authors, whose stories were often popular due to the support the author got from the reader community there. I would still say the same thing today: if you the author and the community of readers made the story popular, protect your copyright! Offering to print books and place them in bookstores is simply a publisher’s job, one that becomes so much easier when they offer to print a story that is popular already. If you did most of the work, from the writing to the promotion/marketing to reader outreach, at the very least copyright should stay yours. AND they should offer to do more for you, actually. (More on that in a future post.)

*In 2019 I became a member of FILCOLS and am currently in its board. I’ve also done panels and info campaigns supporting authors and advocating for copyright education for NBDB, IPO Philippines, and Wattpad HQ.

I want to review each post from my advice column and add updated commentary. Possibly because I’m really enjoying blogging again, and also because I do want to go back and see which parts are no longer relevant and should be changed. This will be a series! If you would like to support this and want more of it, you can buy me a buko pie.

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Q: Where are the opportunities for us to write about non-Filipinos? A: Everywhere.

I wrote this thread on Twitter in June 2022, and will now add it here.

Someone asked on Twitter something like, where are the opportunities for authors who happen to be Filipino but don’t write about Filipinos in their fiction? That actually is what MOST of the opportunities are in international trad pub. Since 2009 (when I started) and before that.

Just following #RomanceClass since 2013 — if you paid attention you would have seen what we were doing in 2014-2016…helping authors break into a romance market that would welcome Filipino authors, just not Filipinos as characters. Those books made money.

Some authors prefer doing that (and we helped them! It’s a great career move). Some authors tried it and then went on to do something else. It is to this day harder to sell a book in the intl romance market (direct to readers, not just to trad pub) if the characters are Filipino.

All you need to do is compare Amazon and Goodreads ratings. Even the books with buzz, authors mentioned on lists made during special months, are rated/read/ranked way less on a regular day. This is the harder path. Not trendy. You kind of have to do this because you want to.

“Where are the opportunities for Filipino authors who don’t want to write about Filipino anything?” Fortunately for that person, sadly for the rest of us and really as an entire creative community, those opportunities are everywhere.

No one is obligated to read/write/buy anything they don’t want to, and I’ve told Filipino creators who are conflicted about this that what matters is the check they got or the seat at the table or the door you’ve opened–that’s an individual’s journey. I’ve already chosen mine.

One need not feel sad about this–every day on this app I boost the work of creators and communities who are doing their thing for us. We are helping create an environment that’s more welcoming to all of us (and future creators) by supporting those doing the work now.

PS There is no significant audience conversion that we’ve seen btw for an author who writes not-Filipino characters and then eventually writes only Filipinos. The audiences are fundamentally different (but for a precious overlap of readers who genuinely read diversely).

PS Adding to the thread that yes writing books featuring characters Not Filipino “made money” (and will). To decide not to do that, when you already know how much money can be made and already have a foot in the door — that involves privilege.

If people can’t/won’t walk away from an easier path/bigger audience/better payday, I understand it. But the doors there open very rarely (or very narrowly if that’s a thing) or not at all. Choices lang.

https://twitter.com/minavesguerra/sta...

Choices made. RomanceClass books at the 2019 Manila International Book Fair.

I don’t know what the circumstances are for people who think they need to perform their Filipino-ness to get published, but many of us are out here just writing Filipinos and are already considered skippable/invisible/worth mentioning only on special days and months. It’s not yet close to fair or crowded. If a Filipino author can release three or more books and is still the only Filipino author in that subgenre or imprint or panel or author group or room, that wasn’t about opening doors probably. The doors are still closed.

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Currently #3

I’m feeling better! It’s great to be able to say that. I may have celebrated by…wearing lipstick and taking a photo of myself. These are the little celebrations I can do at home lol.

1. I watched The Sandman and Wedding Season on Netflix. Enjoyed both.

2. The preview for First Time For Everything now has over 400 views on Wattpad. Eep! Exciting but also scary! I know I posted that first chapter for accountability but HOW are people reading an unfinished thing??? (I know that’s what Wattpad readers do all the time yes but…but how??? says the person who can’t start a show now without knowing if it ends well.) Still, thank you so much for the encouraging response and I’m so motivated to get back to writing.

3. My friends Ansela Corsino and Edith Joaquin are working together! Ansela Corsino’s The Billionaire’s Price is getting an Edith Joaquin Taglish translation as Sabik Sa Ceo! Start reading it on Wattpad, here.

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Comparing my kids 2022 edition

Still exploring the new KDP report system and one of the first things I did was rank my books according to units sold. This is not the first time I’ve “compared my kids” but still, a disclaimer: I have different goals usually for each book, and my books are not meant to compete with each other on a silly scale like “units sold.” But still…I like looking at these things and trying to learn from what this tells me.

So here are my top 10 (of 35) titles as of today, listed according to most units sold on KDP in their respective lifetimes.

1. Fairy Tale Fail (2010). This blog has documented the experiment that was releasing this book on Kindle at all, and look at that. Twelve years later it is undeniably responsible for giving me the kind of career I have now.

2. Love Your Frenemies (2011). In my own memory I still think I released this book too late, that if I released it sooner it would have given the buyers of Fairy Tale Fail a second book to purchase right away. And yes? But even with the delay, this is still #2. Not bad at all.

3. What Kind of Day (2018). Proud of this performing well because I really sat down and made intentional choices here. Characters in their 30s. Higher heat. How to convey that my characters are Filipino, celebrate being Filipino, but also want better for us. Photo shoots. Faces, eyes, lipstick shades, outfit colors. Author name on top. (Not my doing but was extremely helpful and I am so grateful: coverage by fellow authors and bloggers. Thank you for boosting a book that had all these Choices.)

4. Kiss and Cry (2019). Same series as What Kind of Day, same choices about Filipino-ness and asserting such against backdrop of global publishing. This is, if we forced only one category for it, a “hockey/skating romance” and sometimes I wish it had more in common with its “global publishing” peers because I read and loved many of those books before writing this one. But the problem of money always bothered me even if I enjoy hockey/skating romances, and making them Pinoy slides that problem into a story’s foundation that I couldn’t just wave away. My choice though, and I had the best time writing and researching this. (And that’s a real PH hockey jersey on the cover!!!)

5. Better at Weddings Than You (2017). I wrote this as a fun thing for me, as a way to change gears after writing super serious stuff, and reader support at this level helped me decide what to do next. (Which became the Six 32 Central series that started with What Kind of Day.)

6. So Forward (2020). I consider this book a baby, and sometimes I think I don’t talk about it enough? But quietly it’s climbing over my books that have been around for years.

7. Interim Goddess of Love: The Complete Trilogy (2014 ed). Release a compiled edition of your trilogy! Yeah that’s it.

8. Iris After the Incident (2016). The ~heavy book I had been writing that stayed with me for a while. I’m glad it’s up here.

9. Interim Goddess of Love #1 (2012, unpublished). This was the first edition of Interim Goddess! At the time it felt like such a struggle self-publishing this “older YA” title and I’ve since learned to not stress out over this. Which led to the compiled edition that has now outsold #1, cool cool.

10. Totally Engaged (2021). Surprised that another book I still consider a baby is here!

Anyway, I do this, but I love my books, and no book is a failure. Lucas, from Fairy Tale Fail, is always a rock star though.

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Currently #2

It has been a week. I’ve had to spend it either sick (yes covid for the first time) or taking care of family members who need health/medical attention, and have had to manage everything while isolated. Today was another busy day but in terms of my own health I’m better. Thank you to those who expressed concern.

So what’s been up lately? Not just health stuff.

1. We’ve been finalizing a #RomanceClassFlicker book. Excited to have it out in the world!

2. One of my books is part of the Fall 2022 box of Lucy Eden’s Love Notes from Paradise book box! It’s an amazing seasonal set of books, swag, and so much fun [eye emoji] stuff. Happy to be able to contribute something to the project but my gosh you’re getting so much with any box!

3. I’m reviewing RomanceClass x Komiket submissions! And as a proper co-editor for a comic anthology as of this year, I have a new head shot (art by Pancake*).

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Currently #1

I’m starting this series of posts because I’ve been rethinking which parts of social media should I be putting the little things I do that are not yet its own Big Topic. A few weeks ago I had decided it would be Instagram, and then soon after Instagram made the experience worse for users who aren’t posting videos. I do post videos sometimes, and may still do that, but I’m really a text and occasional photo kind of person. Where do I go?

Here, I realized. ~snuggles into blogging

[As I was writing this, the strongest earthquake I’ve felt in this building just happened! A little frazzled but…am going back to composing this now.]

So what are you up to, self?

1. I posted a preview of FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING, my newest work-in-progress, on Wattpad. This was not what I started writing (as perhaps my 28th book) in December 2021, but I had started seeding the plot for this in that book because this was meant to be book 2…and then I did not stop thinking about it. I’ve now let it take over my schedule, and I’m writing it first.

A reminder that this a preview and things could change upon publication! But here’s a synopsis:

During lockdown, good friends Sabrina and Victor spent a few days together in the same apartment. She was starting a cafe; he was teaching her some of his family’s recipes. They made sandwiches, then made out, and almost had sex. At 39, it would have been her first time, and she had just been laid off, and she was just about to put all of her savings into a business that would open during a pandemic–anyway, she panicked. And fled, and did not return any of his calls or messages. And regretted it ever since.

That night looked like a rejection, but Victor was never mad at Sabrina about it. They’d known each other for a long time, and if anything had happened he would have failed at being in a relationship. He was already everything to everyone, from keeping the family business running, to being the reliable eldest son while the world was seemingly on fire. No time to fall in love, even with one of his favorite people.

Two years later, and it’s still not the right time, their world is in an even worse mess, but Sabrina calls him anyway and asks if they could try again. Which part? Everything.

https://www.wattpad.com/story/3173885...

2. #RomanceClass2022 is ongoing! Today is the deadline for Assignment 1, which is when author-participants submit their story concept but written like a back cover blurb/Amazon description. It’s an exercise in visualizing the finished book at the beginning, and the community gets to react/comment on the blurbs (without the author’s name attached). Mainly, will they buy this book now or not? What do they need to see so they’ll buy it now?

No-context #RomanceClass2022 based on 20 submissions:

Posting and commenting on these submissions for a week has an effect on my brain btw — it was probably why I was finally able to write a draft synopsis for First Time for Everything (see above), which I should have done at the beginning! LOL suddenly I became less anxious about my book and now see the path before me. I still get the feeling when starting a new book that I’ve forgotten “how to book” and doing the class and telling other people about the process reminds me that there is a process that works for me, and this feeling of being completely lost will pass.

3. The #RomanceClass x Komiket collab folks got a one-month extension for their submissions but that deadline is now this weekend. Time flies! We’re supposed to do another “final meeting” today (because I thought the final meeting was last month, but anyway “final final” is a thing in publishing). Happy that more comics get a chance to be included! Excited for the publication and the events coming up!

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Cover Reveal! Kilig (romance komiks anthology by RomanceClass and Komiket)

Remember when I posted about possibly creating romance comics??? We started this collab with a briefing via Zoom in December 2021, did an online “speed dating” pairing up artists and authors (who needed pairing) in January 2022, and then did monthly meetings to get updates on the progress of their short romance comic. Their deadline is now July 31, and this is the cover of the (first?!) RomanceClass x Komiket KILIG anthology, by artist Betsy Cola.

Watch out for news about the print edition, the table of contents, and the upcoming launch!

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Love Your Frenemies (with cover art by huhsmile)

I’ve always said Love Your Frenemies has a special place in my heart and it remains true even after writing more books that I too love. Love Your Frenemies was difficult to write, but I felt I needed to do it so I could “make it up to” a character I had cast as a villain at a time when I hadn’t yet thought too deeply about who we decide are the villains in our lives.

I also tried to make it so the book about her doesn’t completely change who she is. In the past I’ve said this book has Terrible People, but in light of current events I should stop saying that I guess. This is a book full of privileged people; yes selfish, yes snobs, but ultimately not thieves or murderers, so they aren’t so bad. Just not the best, you know? In the grand scheme of things.

This week I received a gift from artist huhsmile and I’ve decided to share it. An edition of Love Your Frenemies with this Manolo and Kimmy art as the cover is available here:

1. gum.co/chicmanila4 (Free as a bundle addition if you already own this on Gumroad. Discount code to get it free if you have any previous edition: What is the theme of Chesca’s wedding? 3 words, no spaces, all lowercase.)

2. ko-fi.com/minavesguerra/shop (part of the Love Your Frenemies ebook bundle)

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