Popular BookTuber and Michigan State University grad Geoffrey Storm has recently completed the long and arduous journey to self-publishing his debut novel, Progeny of Gods: Vertuem Destiny. Here he shares his thoughts on that journey, and on the many factors that helped him to achieve his first book.Open Letters: Hello! Thanks for taking the time to talk with us. And congratulations on the appearance of Progeny of the Gods - how's it feel to be a debut author?
Geoffrey Storm: Hi! Thank you!It's . . . ha, to be honest I haven't thought much about it yet! Haven't really had the time, what with the rocky launch. (My physical books were delayed due to my printing company running out of paper. Yes, that's a thing that happens!) So I've been working 24/7 to make sure everything is in order and trying to get my name out there. But luckily all the YouTube friends I've made over my very public journey to publishing have helped me quite a bit, despite the tragic printing issue. Together, we were able to get Progeny of Gods to #7 on Amazon's bestseller list for epic fantasy! So that felt quite nice. :)OLM: The last few years have seen an explosion in self-publishing, both in terms of the number of authors choosing to go that route and the number of options open to them. Tell us a little about your decision to go that route as opposed to the 'traditional' approach of flogging "Progeny" around to agents and mainstream publishers.GS: Wow, well there's really no short answer for this one, but I'll try!So I did originally begin to pitch to agents in the traditional game, attending writers conferences, and I picked up a very critical editor who helped me cut through all the BS and tell me exactly what it takes to make my book commercially competitive. With his help, I was able to snag the interest of an agent from the Donald Maass lit agency. We even got drinks in New York together to talk business. But the deeper I got into the traditional world, the more the veil was pulled back, and I began to see its inner workings for what they really were. At the end of the day PoG had no choice but to be turned into something I did not want it to be (or else it would not be published. Period.). I'd have to chop out ten of thousands of words and strip away some of the themes that were very important to me, in order to better fit it in today's rigid genre pigeon holes. Oh and also they were going to pay me garbage and steal my rights. No thank you. So from an artistic standpoint as well as a business one, I saw independent publishing as a way out of that mess. And YouTube really helped me see that. People in traditional (or "old") media believe YouTube is a place where the untalented go to get their voices heard; people who can't make it in the traditional world. And while there are plenty of untalented people on YouTube (let's be real), there are also mega-stars like Tyler Oakley and Joey Graceffa, who put out quality content on a regular basis, and are HUGE voices for young audiences, with over 4 million subscribers for Joey, and 7 million for Tyler. Those are numbers most TV shows or magazines could only dream of! So if those guys could get right to their audiences in terms of video without dealing with the hassle of agents and middlemen, why couldn't I do it with books?OLM: Congratulations on the Amazon ranking! And given all those book-sales, maybe we should pause for a moment here to bring readers up to speed on the book itself - tells a little about Progeny of Gods.GS: Thank you! It was an awesome day, sitting on my computer, hitting refresh every ten minutes to see my rank climb from the six digits to the singles!Right, what's this book about? Well, similar to my own upbringing, it's about a 19-year-old boy who grows up getting two very conflicting philosophical views of the world: his mother sharing with him the stories of old and showering him with as much light as she could, and his father constantly reminding him that there is true darkness out there that people need protecting from. But that is where the similarities to my life end. Because our hero, Greyson, lives in a world where trees grow seven miles tall, and airships are made of bark instead of steel. Its a setting unlike anything anyone's ever seen before (if I do say so myself), with a history as deep as Tolkien's but a more contemporary tone. I really wanted to write an epic fantasy that took place in a world that used to have a medieval setting, but has since developed into a modern civilization. That's something I've never seen before, and find it endlessly fascinating to explore. Thus I'm kind of inventing my own genre here, something I'm calling tree-punk, as opposed to steampunk.But I cannot tell you about the story without mentioning its crowning gem. Stiqula. He is my villain, the baddest badass you'll ever come across. He's probably the biggest reason I stuck with this story for over 14 years of my life. His story just needed to be told. He needed to live. He's definitely a crowd favorite so far! And I think people are attaching to him because we get to see his side of the story for a good bit of the book. It's a tragic tale; he is a monster, in every meaning of the word. But you really feel for the guy by the end.OLM: Also, you mentioned YouTube, where your channel (named "Stiqula" after your star villain) has over a thousand subscribers, mostly from the ranks of the informal "BookTube" community, yes? How has that community helped you as an author?GS: Ha! Booktube has MADE my career. HANDS DOWN. Discovering that community was another of the many reasons I decided to take the indie route. It has been far more helpful than even my hired publicist. That was honestly the biggest reason I decided to do away with traditional publishing, because it gives me a platform to stand on and puts me right smack in the middle of my people. BOOK people! Haha. I wish I could have found it sooner!OLM: What advice do you have for would-be writers wanting to go the same route you did? Skip the "old" traditional publishing grind? Hire a good freelance editor and publicist, find a target audience, and just publish their books themselves?GS: Sounds easy enough, right? But in reality each one of those steps is increasingly difficult to handle all by yourself. If you want a professional-looking product, I would suggest shying away from indie publishing, unless you are 110% dedicated, are just as business-oriented as you are creative, and have about 30 thousand dollars to burn. Doing it right is not cheap. I only did it because I saw a chance to carve a better path for myself and I took it. But the only reason I was able to see that path was because I had so much experience in the traditional publishing world through the many years I spent attending writers conferences and trying to get an agent. I would say those are years every writer needs to experience. Writing is an art, but publishing is a business, and that business is incredibly difficult to jump into without the help of many people in that business. So I guess my key to success and greatest piece of advice: Find a mentor in the biz.OLM: So you're a debut author now, and your book is charting on Amazon and accumulating positive reviews - this is a milestone in a young author's life, right? It raises natural questions: what's next? More books?GS: MORE BOOKS!! Haha. Many, many more books. Vertuém Destiny is only the first installment in the Progeny of Gods series. And there will be many more to come. :)Visit Geoffrey's YouTube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/user/stiqulaVisit the Progeny of Gods website here: http://geoffreystorm.com/
