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#209 - Isa Agajanian
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Contemporary fantasy author and illustrator, Isa Agajanian is here to chat about her debut novel, which was originally self-published and has since become traditionally published with Tor.
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Transcript
Introduction of Isa Agajanian and 'Modern Divination'
00:00:00
Speaker
Ooh, a spicy question. I love it. Because the writing is sort of everything. You could have fixed plot holes, but if the writing... So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this. So it's kind of a gamble.
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast. With me today is a contemporary fantasy author and illustrator whose debut novel, Modern Divination, is coming out in the UK on the 30th of January. It's Isa Agajanian. Hi, welcome. Hello. Hi. Thanks so much for being on with me. It's so great to chat with you. um Jumping right in, as we usually do, your debut novel, Modern Divination, out very, very soon, tell us a little bit about it.
Isa's Passion for Medieval History
00:00:45
Speaker
Okay, so Modern Divination is a contemporary fantasy romance for fans of The Discovery of Witches and Howl's Moving Castle ah that follows two rival medievalists as they come together and set aside their petty differences to quash a threat to the witches around them. Okay, what is a medievalist? Somebody who studies medieval history.
00:01:11
Speaker
Okay, like historians. Yeah, it's yeah, just like a more ah niche version of historian, or niche type of historian. Yeah. Not so broad as all of history, just very much the medieval period. Oh, yeah, just the fun stuff. Okay. And it is that where your kind of interest really lies within that period?
00:01:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. I don't think I'm, I've definitely like chan- Like ah projected a lot of my um lack of academic background onto them. um i'm I'm living vicariously through them. i I certainly wish I'd studied medieval history, but I didn't. Oh, I see. So would I be right in thinking that there was like a large research element to this?
00:02:00
Speaker
I'm going to be honest, ah not necessarily. I think the biggest pieces of research I had to do were like, how does Cambridge work? Like the whole web of schools over there, ah but most of the medieval like ah elements that I drew from were things that I had read. um So I do have a large collection of medieval um literature just at my house that I like to read. I have a fascination with it. It's just no proper schooling, no formal education. So I'm familiar with it. it's it's I've got no degree, though.
00:02:35
Speaker
Yes. Well, I would say, like you mentioned, there is like, you know, a fantastical element to this. So I would imagine it is pseudo historical in many ways. yeah The stuff you have at home, is that historical fiction? Is that kind of very much grounded in what did happen? Or is it also so sort of a historical fantasy?
From Self-Publishing to Traditional Publishing
00:02:55
Speaker
Oh, um, it's a lot of just like the, like the classic medieval romances. Um, so I've got like, uh, my, the love interest in this book, his name is Teddy Ingram. He has this fascination with Sir Gowen and the green knight, um, that story. And I have, I have a fair few, um, translations of that myself that I've read through. And I just think it's a very neat story. So yeah, I've got a lot of stuff like that.
00:03:20
Speaker
Ah, okay. So are there elements of Arthurian legend in this? Yeah. well Well, if you squint. Okay. I shouldn't make promises. that it's If you squint, it's there. Yeah. You wouldn't describe it as a retelling. That would be too far. Absolutely not. I wish I was ah clever enough for retelling.
00:03:41
Speaker
So on your website, I saw that, well, it says that this is a re-release. Does that mean that you had previously self-published this? Yeah. i It's actually coming out, I think, I think it's coming out two yeah on like the two year anniversary of the self-published release date because I published it. Okay. Not exactly. I published on January 31st of 2023, but it's coming out on January 30th of 2025 with Tor and Pan Macmillan.
00:04:11
Speaker
Okay, so this is the really interesting stuff because like a lot of this podcast is like about the journey and about how being an author and having or having a novel published is like there's so many different ways to do it. So I'm really interested in this kind of thing coming from indie publishing and um it's kind of strange to say but I've observed that it does seem to be a more popular route to being, a more and more popular route, I should say, as time goes by, to being traditionally published is first indie publishing a novel.
Navigating Indie to Traditional Publishing Transition
00:04:43
Speaker
I had Travis Baldry on at the end of last year. I just saw that one, or I just listened to that one.
00:04:50
Speaker
Yeah. and And, you know, that's not a dissimilar situation ah to to you in that, you know, he self-published at first. And then, um what's but what's the word for, like, unpublishing it, I guess? I don't know. Retracting it. Taking it back. Yeah, that's that that works. I don't know. yeah I don't know if there's an official term for it.
00:05:09
Speaker
And then like you because he was picked up by a big publisher. So what kind of happened there? How did we get from EU self-publishing to now it's coming out with a traditional publisher? Oh, man. So I i i think I was extremely lucky to be approached by Pan Macmillan. I didn't seek them out, but they were ah you know, Tor has been one of my dream publishers for a very long time as a, you know, a ah lover of fantasy science fiction. i I feel like if there were any, I had like, I had two publishers that mentally I like I told myself if either of these two publishers were interested in a book deal, I would stop self publishing for them and Tor was one of them.
00:05:58
Speaker
I think Del Rey was the other one, but now my list is brought in significantly. I'm just kind of like, if you want if you're interested in a book, I'll just send it to you. um But i I wasn't actually going to pursue trad publishing for this book. i That mostly stemmed from the fact that I didn't really have a lot of faith in myself. And also I knew that what I was writing was really self-indulgent and fun.
00:06:23
Speaker
um I think i think like ah emotionally I didn't have the the like thick enough skin to weather the querying and submission process, so I was like, I'm going to send it straight to self-publishing. I really like having control over my projects.
00:06:39
Speaker
i've i'm very I'm very driven, so I think I have like a set view of what I want my creative projects to be. and i was like anything If it deviates, if anyone gets their hands um into it too much, and you know yeah it deviates from what my vision is, like I'll cry. I'll just break down. So self-publishing really allowed me to hone in on that and make it my own. so Yeah, the Pan Macmillan Tor UK deal didn't really come about by me chasing it actively. I got really lucky in the you know the fact that my editor reached out to me and was like, hey, are you interested? Let's let's chat.
00:07:23
Speaker
um Yeah, because previously it was like this is i I was really happy being self-published. It was nice. i don't think i was you know By the time I actually got the deal, I had already finished the second book in the series. It's a duology. so i was kind I finished the you know ah conclusion of this story and I was ready to self-publish that one as well. um and I got sort of halted in my tracks there with that offer.
00:07:50
Speaker
Oh, I see. So you, you were about to release the second book, two of two, and you you actually didn't because of the, that was when the offer came in. Yeah. So had the, had this book done, like, had had it really done well off your kind of initial indie publishing?
The Impact of Social Media on Book Sales
00:08:07
Speaker
See, i um I find that in depublishing, a lot of the community is online and not in person. And I, you know, it's been that way with trad publishing too, but I have had more of a community trad publishing, which meant that I wasn't really able to gauge what a good level of success was in indie publishing. I didn't really have people to be like, hey, um tell me what you make it a in a month or how many copies you sell. So I thought I was doing pretty like modestly. um I think in its lifetime, it sold I think it sold less than 5,000 copies, which okay
00:08:50
Speaker
um i'm told I'm told actually isn't like the number you're supposed to hit to get any ah notoriety for a self-published book. which But to be fair, I self-publish this thing knowing that or thinking that like 30 people max were going to read it. So the fact that 4,000 plus had read it at all, I was like, wow, that's that's wild. yeah That's super cool. I don't really like being perceived that widely, but I thought that was a lot. I think I yeah listened to um a panel that Olivee Blake was on where she was saying that like her, she was agented before the Atlas six got picked up for a traditional publication. um And she said,
00:09:33
Speaker
that her agent really wasn't entertaining the idea of submitting the app like, uh, submitting the, what's it called? The manuscript for the Atlas six, two publishers until they hit a 10,000 copy mark. And I was like, I don't know what happened to me then. Like it was like 4,000 Tor was in my DMS. Yeah. I guess they were trying to get ahead of other people. They'd obviously saw something in it and they wanted to get out of that before the other editors saw it as well.
00:10:01
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. but yeah i mean and and like Compared to other self-published books that got picked up for traditional publication, I don't think mine was particularly um like more successful. or I don't even think it was like up to par. I really did get very lucky with this deal. I don't think they realized how low the numbers actually were.
00:10:23
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. But that's interesting. How did you go about, like, did you do much in the in the way of marketing and like actually trying to kind of make sales when you'd self-published it?
00:10:35
Speaker
Yeah, at in the beginning I did. So up to release and for I think the first few months I was really pushing it with marketing. I was still on i was still active on TikTok prior to release and for like maybe a ah month or two after release, but um a lot of the a lot of the publicity that happened for it was entirely out of my control. I don't think I really did anything to move the needle in terms of sales. I know As an indie author, I know indie authors really, really push for like being your own you know marketer or publicist. and you know For the most part, all of us are doing this with like day jobs and like with spare money, so you can't really shell out the money for that kind of thing. but
00:11:19
Speaker
um I think I was like, especially lazy in that I really didn't make as much of an effort as I could have. And as much of an effort as I see other indie authors doing. So a lot of the publicity came from just like sheer dumb luck. Uh, the fact that, yeah, I mean, no piece of content that I made, uh, swayed sales as much as like one random viral video that somebody else made who was like a completely random reader and.
00:11:47
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, there are a couple of videos that I'm like, I directly attribute the success success of this book too, because it's like, I would see, I would be sent to like a ah ah reel that went kind of viral and I would go check my, my sales and it would be like a spike in ebook, like ebook orders for that day. it's it's Yeah. Very direct reflection of what they were doing, not what I was doing.
00:12:10
Speaker
Yeah, you can just never tell. um A friend of mine who's Northern had a similar thing where one of her books was out and it was doing fine, you know, pretty good, mid-list. um And then one day it just, um someone essentially just sort of filmed the first page on their phone, put music to it,
00:12:31
Speaker
And then it went on TikTok and it blew up and went sort of, not like massively viral, but it it got like tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of ah views. And then it, you know, immediately sold out in all the stores. They had to buy in new copies of the books and things like that. And it's, you just never know what's going to happen with social media sometimes, especially TikTok.
00:12:52
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And it's like, since I wasn't really on TikTok afterwards, um I didn't know why I was getting these random spikes of sales until someone would be like, I just saw this look, it's doing numbers. And I was like, oh, wow, that is that is that's doing a number for sure. Yeah, that I mean, there's there's something validating about that, though, because like the one that I mentioned, was it a sort of ah like an image of the first
Writing Style and Tropes
00:13:13
Speaker
page? Or was it just like someone talking about the book? Was it a mixture of those?
00:13:17
Speaker
Yeah, I've been fortunate to have a couple of situations like that where they pick up some steam. So one of them that went got particularly big um was just like an aesthetic reel. So it's one of those ones where you put a bunch of photos together and you like ah play them really fast. um And I can't remember what the caption was, but there was some caption on it that was basically just like this book and then it had a bunch of those. Oh, my God, what's the what's the symbol, the little the little the little V, the the greater than symbol?
00:13:47
Speaker
Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. Someone was like this book with a bunch of those and then it was like a bunch of photos flashing very quickly. It's standard romantic marketing reel, I guess. But TikTok, I keep saying reel, like people are on Bookstagram more. But yeah, on BookTok, they'd done that. And that one got massive for some reason.
00:14:10
Speaker
But yeah, that was probably one of the bigger ones. And then a couple of them were just people whose excitement it was somebody talking about a book, um somebody who I knew vaguely, they were talking about the book in a very excitable manner. And people love that people love to see. I know I personally love to see readers get excited about books. So um yeah, a couple of those picked up some traction. And it was really nice.
00:14:36
Speaker
Okay, so kind of kind of a mixture, but at the same time it wasn't, these weren't reels or ah TikToks that you were creating, these were other people just kind of finding, somehow finding purchase on the internet and getting through that. so That's awesome though. And whilst we're talking about it, you mentioned there is there is a sort of, um especially on TikTok, there's definitely a way that romanticy is um presented. There's like certain ah things that that are pushed out with that and and and it's very much, there's a lot of talk about tropes when it comes to romanticy, which is kind of fun. um Do you know, do you have a list of all the tropes that are in modern divination?
00:15:19
Speaker
I don't. i don't i'm I'm going to be honest, I don't remember what's in Modern Divination most days. I got asked a question about something in Mod Div and I was like, I don't i don't know what you're talking about. ah But I don't. I don't usually write around tropes or have tropes in mind when I'm writing. It just kind of happens.
00:15:39
Speaker
um And most of the time I find out that a trope has been in a book because somebody will tag me in a review and list tropes. And I was like, Oh, I didn't know that was there. But you're right. So um yeah, I think tropes just managed to like sneak their way in, depending on the situation. Yeah, I mean, because it's realistically, there's, there's not really a story that doesn't have tropes in it. It would be very difficult to write something that fits into a genre if it didn't have the hallmarks of said genre.
00:16:09
Speaker
Absolutely. I think the only thing I like consciously put into this was I was like, they're rivals and they like to fight a lot. And sometimes that fighting turns a little bit like, you know, saucy, but that's that's that was I think the only thing I consciously put into it. Everything else just kind of happened.
00:16:26
Speaker
Okay. But that's not something that while you're writing it, you're thinking, oh, I'm going to put this trope in. That's something that, that's in the part of inception phase. That's when you're thinking of the story and the characters, you're like, well, they're basically, you know, there's going to be a rivals to lovers thing going on here. Yeah. Okay. That's cool. That's interesting to know. and I love talking about tropes and stuff like that. It's always, always a fun one. Um, before we head over to the desert island, I did just want to get a couple of questions in before the halfway mark.
00:16:56
Speaker
ah One of them is your bio on Instagram says you write contemporary fantasy and you write about birds. what What's going on with the birds thing? I don't know. I just fixate on them a lot. It's really funny because I just got this new computer and I have one of those like um And there's like wallpaper thing, like, um, it's a called default wallpapers, the default backgrounds. And there's a bunch of birds on it looking out from the, um, screen behind this, behind this. So it feels very fitting. I don't know. I think I just, I like the idea of them.
00:17:35
Speaker
I don't even know what draws me to them. it's just i think I don't think I can appreciate something at a normal level. I think that once I kind of like something, I have to devote my entire being about like to being about them. so yeah I don't know. I think birds just as a concept really yeah really hit me.
00:17:58
Speaker
um I think wings are cool. I think they're just neat little creatures. I think ah they're funny looking. I just think they're neat. Like I i genuinely just think they they're neat. Hey, that's nice. Sometimes you just you don't need to explain something. Sometimes you can just like something for for what it is. And
Finding the Right Agent
00:18:20
Speaker
that's great. Yeah, I wish I had a cool reason to like them. But I just think they're cool.
00:18:26
Speaker
I think they're pretty cool too. Do you feel like it's there's always going to be, no matter kind of what your what your story is about, you're always going to kind of have an element of birds in it? Because i mean's there's birds on the cover of your books already. Oh, yeah. i they They managed to sneak their way in. um As a writer, I fall back into a lot of ah you know, ways to describe things, metaphors, just, um you know, bits of imagery. I have I have my my fail safes when I'm when I'm at a loss for words, I'm like, I can fall back onto these things, and they will carry me into the next sentence. And I feel like bird imagery specifically is so versatile, that um it just ends up in everything I do. And then I'm like, Yeah, it was always about the birds.
00:19:15
Speaker
ah You didn't get that? it was but The whole thing was about birds the whole time. Yeah. it's been Where have you been? Open your eyes. It's obvious. Cool. So the last thing I wanted to ask before we go to Des Arland was, we talked about how you indie published this and then editors reached out to you. You are with Shayla... Is it Kanighi? Is that how you pronounce it? Yes, that's it. Yeah, she's my agent.
00:19:41
Speaker
Yeah, so she's your agent. At what point, so between self-publishing and then um signing with Tor McMillan, at what point did Shayla come into the mix?
00:19:53
Speaker
Shayla came into the mix um after I had already had one call with my you know future editor. So I had a DM one day that was like, hey, I'm an editor at and you know Pan Macmillan Tour. Would you be interested in hopping on a call to discuss trad publishing?
00:20:12
Speaker
And I asked a bunch of my friends who were already in the trad pub sphere. I was like, what am I supposed to do? And all of them were immediately like get an agent. And that is the smartest thing I think any ah author who's getting scouted could do because you know, trad publishing is, yeah you know, people don't, people want to save money. People don't want to pay out things without negotiations. Like I love my editor. I'm not saying anything bad about that. It's just, um that's just kind of the nature of,
00:20:41
Speaker
business, I think. yes yeah You're going to want to negotiate something. So I waited until I'd gotten on this call with my editor and sort of gauged her interest, listened to what she was what she was pitching for this book. She had a lot of big ideas about what we could do for it, about you know potential covers and ways to market this and what she saw like for the future of modern divination. And once I sort of decided, yeah, this is something I would like to pursue, I um i I was told not to query it, but to say specifically that um I'm seeking representation for an offer that already exists, which is very different from a query, I guess. I included a lot of the same information, but most of it was like, I have this offer. It's free money for you if you negotiate the contract, which enticed a lot more um
00:21:35
Speaker
agents than querying ever did for me. I said I didn't um i didn't pursue trad publishing before this, but that's not entirely true. I submitted like 10 queries before I made the... I was already sort of planning to self-publish this, but I was like, what the hell? Why don't I just submit a couple of queries and see if anybody wants it? And nobody did. um okay But I think I didn't really intend for it to go anywhere. I didn't expect it to go anywhere.
00:22:00
Speaker
um That being said, the 2nd, I was like, hey, I have an offer for publication. I need representation for this contract. Every agent that I reached out to was like, let's get on a call right now. So we can discuss this because that that is, you know, it's.
00:22:19
Speaker
it's It's much different than workshopping a book and not knowing if an editor is going to want it and you know going through the grueling process of submitting submitting to publishing houses. um yeah I am just basically telling them, like I have this contract for you to look over and work out and then you'll you'll have your commission, you know you'll get your cut.
00:22:36
Speaker
Yeah, you're you're paying them essentially. for Yeah, but it's like that wasn't really yeah yeah ah that wasn't something I would have thought of, that you know querying and seeking representation where or for an existing offer were different. i would have I think without guidance, I would have just started querying again and been like ah probably buried the lead that like there's an offer waiting for them.
00:22:56
Speaker
PS. I actually already have an offer. Yeah. So it's like i got the I got the offer and then I like submitted a bunch of, yeah I sent a bunch of emails really, really quickly. And I was like, please, please, please, please, please. I need, I need someone real fast. And I think I called, I had i had three different calls with, I had, you know, ah calls with three different agents.
00:23:18
Speaker
And yeah, um I went with Shayla. She was just ah very wonderful to talk to, very easy to talk to. I think publishing in general gives me a lot of anxiety, so I needed someone who was really communicative and um casual in her approach. So it's it yeah, it is really easy to talk with her and just work things out and not feel like this is, and you know you know, one mistake is going to end my career. She's very much like,
00:23:46
Speaker
ah you know she's she's reass She's reassuring. um She just ended up being the best fit for me and the future of my works. Yeah, I mean, because it's, as a relationship, it's a very um close relationship. It sort of transcends just a business relationship, I think, often author and agent.
Isa's Desert Island Book and Upcoming Release
00:24:06
Speaker
Like you have to, there's a lot more going on back and forth than just um send document, document thumbs up, send back, redraft, et cetera, et cetera. There's a lot of, yeah, you need you need someone who you kind of like connect with on a certain level. Oh yeah, she rocks.
00:24:25
Speaker
She rocks. Awesome. Well, um and what a great position to be in where you can kind of cherry pick which agents you want and obviously you've you've found a ah perfect one for you. um So we're at the point in the episode where I will ask you, Isa, if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book do you hope that it would be?
00:24:48
Speaker
It would be Gideon the Ninth. And I had to think about this for a long time because I love Gideon the Ninth, probably one of my favorite books ever. But I have, if it felt sort of and traitorous to think about that because there's a book on my shelf that takes up an entire shelf. I have like 20 plus copies of this book. I think I have about 25 copies of this book. And I thought it would be wrong not to take that one. But I do think if I had it on a desert island, I would be so sad all the time.
00:25:19
Speaker
Well, yeah, but it would at least in real life, it would avoid the organization of someone hearing this podcast and then seeing your shelf full of this book and being like, you didn't pick this book that you have a million copies. And it's like, I love this book so much, but it would like just hurt me. It's one of those books that like impacts you.
00:25:41
Speaker
Yeah, so much, but it's just not fun to read. And I think Gideon the Ninth is not only like a perfect book, it is absolutely perfect. It is fun and intelligent and devastating in its own right. But yeah, but it's a good it's a good time. um I'll have fun with that book. And I think I'll continue to have fun with that book. I just reread it again.
00:26:04
Speaker
recently. It's so long, but it's so good. i think i'll I think I would just stay entertained by that one forever. Yeah, because it's it's happy and sad. It's that kind of complete, yeah you have the complete journey and that you go through the full spectrum of emotions.
00:26:21
Speaker
So I think it's perfect. And also if you're stranded on a desert island, a long book, that's good. That's good thinking. Good forethought. um Next up, ah we are going to dial it back a bit to East's writing origin story, as well as a bit about writing processes and habits, but that will be in the extended episode available on Patreon.
00:26:42
Speaker
um but But amazing and and here you are about to publish it traditionally it's going to be in in bookshops and everything It's going to be awesome. I'm so happy for you Thank you. Appreciate that. And and and that brings us to the end the end of the episode. and Thank you so much, Isa, for coming on the podcast and telling us all about ah your your your debut novel and and its rerelease. Modern Divination will be out 30th of January in the UK and I believe in May in the US. Yeah, it's been awesome awesome chatting with you. So nice meeting you. Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
00:27:18
Speaker
And for anyone listening, if you would like to keep up with what ESA is doing, you can follow them on, uh, on Instagram at ESA.agajanian. To support this podcast, like, follow, and subscribe, join the Patreon for ad-free extended episodes, and check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes. Thanks again ESA, and thanks to everyone listening. We will catch you on the next episode.