Episode 32: Independent Book Review

September 5th, 2019
Hosted by Katie Rainey
Guest: Joe Walters
Produced by Katie Rainey
Transcript by Jon Kay
Podcast Assistant: Dylan Thomas

Welcome to the 32nd installment of the Animal Riot Podcast. Today we've got Joe Walters of Independent Book Review on the podcast. Joe traveled from Philly to be with us today & we're so excited to talk about IBR and all things book marketing, editing, and publishing. IBR wants to help you discover your next favorite book - and to help the authors who are writing them. They bring to light works by self-published authors and small presses, giving them the time of day that normal review outlets would not. Hear Joe talk about this endeavor and his very knowledgeable background in all things book marketing. 

>> Katie: Welcome to the 32nd episode of the Animal Riot Podcast, brought to you by Animal Riot Press, a literary press for books that matter. I'm your stand-in host, Katie Rainey, filling in for Brian Birnbaum while he’s away. I’m very excited about our guest today. Joe Walters is the founder of Independent Book Review. When he’s not doing editorial, reviewing, or promoting work at IBR, he’s working on his novel and trusting the process. Previously, he worked as the marketing director at Inkwater Press and as a fiction reader for the Indianola Review. He has published stories in magazines such as Literary Orphans, The Airgonaut, and more. He tweets @joewalters13. Hi Joe.

>> Joe: Hey, how's it going?

>> Katie: I'm really excited you're here because I happened on IBR's website while I was just like researching around and finding things and was really excited to see somebody doing the work that you're doing, which I definitely want to get into. And I want to read your about section from the website cause I think it says volumes about what you guys do. Independent Book Review wants to help you discover your next favorite book and to help the authors who were writing them. Books that you've just got to hear about our being published by small presses and self publishers every day but they're rarely on the shelves of your local bookstore. Why? Because they weren't published by the Big Five. And you know what? We think that kind of sucks. And we think that kind of sucks too. That's kind of why we started Animal Riot. Tell me about Independent Book Review... What you guys do and what it is.

>> Joe: Yeah, absolutely. I started this April 2018 after my stint over at Inkwater. I kind of realized the self publishing in small press scene had a lot of difficulty getting books into bookstores and libraries, and I was kind of on the back end of that, talking to the authors and hearing what they want out of the experience and a lot of the time it's just for as many people to read their book as possible. And unfortunately, even though the book could be as wonderful as any of the ones published by the Big Five publishers, people were just weren't willing to take a look at it. And so I started Independent Book Review to focus specifically on the small presses and the self published authors where I kind of vet which ones come in and take a look and just kind of research, which ones, I think sound amazing and find some of the best covers I can see around and build up a team of reviewers and basically just put together a document first to try to see if this team would want to take a look. And want to read a few free books, and then we kind of moved on from there. Everybody really started to enjoy it. And we just kept on building. And I guess we got to where we are now.

>> Katie: Well cool. So, how many reviewers do you guys have?

>> Joe: Probably somewhere around 10 at this point.

>> Katie: Yeah. So how many? How many reviews have you done total?

>> Joe: Oh, I don't know. Unfortunately, because we have the ones that are published on the website and then we also have the editorial book reviews so personally, I've written probably somewhere, like 30 plus reviews since April 2018 and then the team... I do a lot of the editorial reviewing Jalen, my creative director, does a lot of the editorial reviewing as well. But the reviewers focus mainly on the books that I think are really interesting coming in through our submission queue. So I would probably put our number, including my 30. I'd probably say around like 60 to 65.

>> Katie: Wow. That's a crazy amount.

>> Joe: A lot of books, man. Yeah, I like it but it takes a long time.

>> Katie: So are you getting a lot of, like, small presses sending you their books constantly now?

>> Joe: Yeah. I mean, since we've been able to kind of establish relationships which is again, is one of my favorite parts about this. Like the Big Five, they're not answering their emails and sending you thank you notes when you write reviews for them. But there are 1 to 5 people behind a lot of these presses, and they just really appreciate the work that we do. And so whenever we come in and do a good job for them, they're really willing to send a physical ARC over to our house and we can take some nice pictures of it, and it's just been really nice experience getting to know them.

>> Katie: You review self published books to.

>> Joe: Yes, we do.

>> Katie: And, like, what do you think of self publishing? What's your opinion on it?

>> Joe: Yeah, I mean, first. I think it's great, and I think it's really awesome that anybody who has a dream of getting their work out in front of other people. It's a direct outlet. The fact that you have to submit, even though maybe you're just wanting to publish this book so your friends can read it or your family can read it and if you would just mean a ton to be able to see it between book covers and the fact that self publishing is available for them is just so amazing. And really they even get to have a nice little chunk of the sales from it, too. The royalty makes a big difference. Traditional publishers in the Big Five if you're making just a small portion of each book sold, but with self publishing that rises completely. And of course the self publisher has to cover all of the production. So they're paying for covers. They're paying for editing. They have to pay for formatting. They they're putting out a ton of money in the beginning and through marketing as well. So while they have to pay quite a bit, if they do a great job, if they put their book out there and they make sure that the world can see it with the help of IBR and other places thing, it can really work out for them. So I love self publishing. I know that some people feel that they're just a ton of books out there now. Do you have any? How do you feel that?

>> Katie: Yeah, it's a great question. So we ask a lot because I'm... you know, there was a time in my life where I poo pooed self publishing as most writers do. And when you start to get into publishing yourself, you're like that is an incredible undertaking to self publish a book like you have to be smart. There are a lot of things that you have to figure out and know. And, yes, Amazon's, making it easier and easier for you to just like, put your, like, print out your book and look for your friends to buy it and stuff. But to actually like make a self published book successful takes a lot of skill and knowledge. And so I'm actually like an admirer of self published authors. And essentially, that's what any small press almost is in the beginning. Like most small presses, I know we start with our own books like we're starting with Brian Birnbaum's book  because we want to make all the mistakes on ourselves, right? We don't want to take somebody's works and...

>> Joe: Sorry Brian (laughter)

>> Katie: He was gung ho about being the guinea pig, and he's pretty excited about it and like, Yeah, there were definitely mistakes we made, and we were just like, OK, well, we won't do that what the next one. And but it's been going really great. And then the other thing, like we So my gosh, I can't believe I'm telling this story again on the podcast. Usually this is Brian that tells the story, and I'm sure that folks who listen to us regularly are gonna be like, seriously? Have you ever heard of the writer Sergio De La Pava?

>> Joe: I have not.

>> Katie: So he is a public defender, and about 10 years ago in between, like his 80 case load a year, he was sitting in the courtroom writing this novel and wrote this, like, 7-800 page novel that is incredible, that no one would pick up. I mean probably over 150 rejections by agents and publishers. Like no one would pick up. So his wife, Susanna, who is also a public defender, both just like there. We call them the De La Pava crime family. They're big supporters of us, and they're amazing humans. But she took the book and self published it, and she did all the marketing and everything and sold something like 30,000 copies.

>> Joe: Oh geez.

>> Katie: And then it got picked up by the University of Chicago Press.

>> Joe: That's wonderful.

>> Katie: And now he's publishing with Pantheon, the imprints out of Random House. So, like yeah, we on our book tour on our collaborative tour last week in North Carolina. Where were we were going around to different bookstores doing talks about publishing trip with another press, and I met a ton of self published authors and, like we had them talk about their experience. And it's quite incredible, just like how much people have to let go and figure out. Like one lady joked that she went to the University of YouTube to figure it all out. That's what you gotta do.

>> Joe: My gosh. There's some good stuff on there.

>> Katie: Yeah, yes. How often do you get self published authors reaching out now?

>> Joe: Largely self published authors are reaching out. So we have two different ways that we find the books first would be straight through our website.

>> Katie: How I found you.

>> Joe: There's a page called "Get Your Book Review".  A lot of the time, it's self published authors who discover Independent Book Review through various different ways and just head on, give me their blurb, give me their book cover and send me the pdf file. And so I would say probably 75% of the books that were submitted to us are through self published authors because they are working their asses off to make sure their books get out there because they have nobody else to do it for them. And so they're out there doing that. And then about 25% of the time small presses find us. Their publicists find us or the author themselves find us, and they reach out and they follow the same protocol. And so, in order to kind of make it balanced, in addition to the submission that we get through our website in order to make it balance, I do research myself. I love thio to wander through the the interwebs and find incredible indie presses that are out there. I just have a blast I had on to poets and writers Small Press Database and basically, just scroll through which everything looks great and they specialize by genre. So I have specific readers, all my team who specialize in specific genres. So there's an indie press who specializes in romance. I'm gonna head in there and I see which covers catch my eye, which blurbs catch my eye, and I'm gonna see if I can grab that for them. So a lot of the time we get those submissions, and then I'm going to go ahead on one day and do about 12 hours of research, find some awesome indie presses and reach out and see if I can get those books for them. In a lot of the time they're willing to send him out.

>> Joe: So you guys do all genres?

>> Katie: Yeah, we do. I stay away from religious texts just cause I don't know who's reading, but everything else we're really open to as of right now, since I do a lot of the reviewing and Jalen does a lot of the reviewing. We love literary fiction, and I love anything with a little bit of magic realism to it. So a lot of the time I take special attention to those, and we don't have quite as many SciFi readers on my team that I'd like. But at the end of the day, we want to review everything. There's so many authors out there. There's so many great books and really I don't have enough reviewers and special genres to take care of everything, but hopefully we'll get there.

>> Katie: How do you get reviewers?

>> Joe: A few of them have found us just threw a little bit of, like previous working together. So I've got a couple of self published authors on there. Like Gary Corbin is a terrific thriller writer, Rhonda Reads writes some really nice literary thrillers as well, and they're both self published authors. They found us that way and just asked if they would be interested. After that, I kind of went on and created a "write for us" Page on Independent Book Review and you can go ahead and find that now. And basically all they had to do is reach out to me and let me know what their experience was, what kind of books they like to read. And I kind of vet them and make sure that they're able to do a great job.

>> Katie: To write?

>> Joe: Yeah, and so we've recorded more than 10 and I've had to pull it back. Just a ton of work on my part.

>> Katie: Yeah, because you have to edit all of them and get them ready for the website.

>> Joe: Yeah, edit them and then read them as well and then work on other stuff. There's only so many hours.

>> Katie: So you're not looking for more writers right now?

>> Joe: If you specialize in sci fi, fantasy, poetry then I'd love to get away with way more poetry readers. If you specialize in more literary, too, because Jalen and I have our hands full a little bit and we're one of the few literary readers on the square. If you love literary fiction and you're interested in review and self-published and small press literary fiction? Just reach out to me and we'll see if we can work together.

>> Katie: Are the reviewers paid?

>> Joe: Not right now, No. So for editorial reviews, they are paid. So whenever somebody pays us, were able to pay for it. But as of right now, since we don't have any like advertising revenue coming in, which is still hopefully coming in the future. I plan to pay my members.

>> Katie: Yeah, I tried to tell as many writers that I can that even if you're not getting paid to write reviews like it's good practice to write reviews. Just I mean in general to be reading. But there are so many opportunities. If you write reviews consistently for other writers, by the time your book comes out, you're liable to have, like, a huge platform that's gonna write you a review too. That's what we're seeing with Brian. For years. he wrote reviews for you know, Atticus Review or he would like We would get Coffee House Press books all the time and write them. They still send me books. And if I had time, I would write them reviews all the time. But it's just really good practice for writers to do that and to build it's an easy way to build your network.

>> Joe: Yeah, I mean, think about it in terms of if you are a writer and you plan on having a book coming out, how would it feel if somebody read your book and reviewed it for free? That's really nice. Thanks for reading it. Thanks for helping spread the word about it. Thanks for putting it on Independent Book Review, which has a pretty nice website. Like Thank you for making my book sell better. I'm gonna remember you, might follow you on Twitter and like, hang out for a while.

>> Katie: You guys have a beautiful website.

>> Joe: Thank you so much.

>> Katie: Who does your website?

>> Joe: That's Jalen. Jalen Carrell. She came up with the hand paperback idea. She runs our Instagram page, and she always does are we do bookstore halls where we love to travel. So we've bounced around the country a little bit and stopped in different cities, and she'll take the photos. And then once we realized that we kind of liked the personal aspect of having a paperback as opposed to just having a digital cover up there then she came up with the idea of having one uniform photo for these paperbacks that are coming in. And basically we just walk around neighborhoods and find different backgrounds that match really well with each book cover. And it's really just done a great job for cleaning up the website first and foremost and making it seem like somebody is behind these. You know, there's there's a team who read it. One person read this book, and this is what they have to say about it, and I'm really, really proud of the way it looks. I think Jalen's done an amazing job.

>> Katie: And you guys have other services that you provide through Independent Book reviews, not just book reviews. What are some of those other services that you guys provide?

>> Joe: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So that was kind of my plan from the beginning was to have an entertainment portion which provides authors with promotion, and that's kind of brings everybody and brings the writers in and brings the readers in. And then on the other side, I know that as an indie author, it's really, really difficult to hire your team of production. Your production team. There are a ton of editors out there. There are a ton of book cover designers, and there are a ton of formatters...?

>> Katie: Yeah, that's a word.

>> Katie: That slipped out really strangely. And you just got to really know that this person is gonna work hard for you. And take care of the product that you really care about. And so the goal really was to run two different things is the Independent book Review promotional part. And then to be able to have trustworthy Author service is that people can come too. And so right now we offer developmental editing, the big picture that really is essential to making sure your story is perfect. Not perfect, but the story's the best it can be. Editorial letters, which basically developmental editing, is a pretty expensive asset that you have to hire for your team. And then the editorial letter is more like a manuscript evaluation. It's not quite as in depth, but the editorial letter will let you know what exactly is kind of off with your story right now and how you might be able to go ahead and fix that. And in addition to that, I was the book marketer at Inkwater press. I also just do freelance book marketing. If you want to contact me and see if you wanna sell your book a little better. If you don't really know what you're doing to try to reach out to reviewers, I'm here for a book marketing publicity at at an hourly rate, and then we also offer, there's one missing here group beta reading, which I'm super excited.

>> Katie: That's what I was gonna ask about the group thing. Yeah, so what does that look like?

>> Joe: So basically I just knew that getting beta readers is a fun experience as a writer, you're finally ready to share your book with a handful of people. But it's also kind of difficult to guarantee that not only are you getting the feedback in the first place, because sometimes they just kind of disappear. But getting quality feedback. Sometimes those readers, like yeah, loved it. Good job. It's like you don't need that, Really. I'm glad that you liked it. But, like, can you tell me something? What did you like? Was there anything wrong with it? But could you fix something? And so I went out fiver a little bit and knew a few authors who I know provide really great feedback and just decided to put together a team of vetted beta reading pros who would be able to not only do a really good job with your manuscript and tell you what's wrong and tell you how you can fix it from a reader's point of view instead of straight editor's point of view, and to do it at a reasonable price. Beta reading is a part of the process, a part of the publishing process especially when you're doing self publishing. And I know how much money it is to self publish and just kind of wanna work with authors there.

>> Katie: Yeah, you guys have really affordable services.

>> Joe: Thank you.

>> Katie: Yeah. So you only published good reviews, right?

>> Joe: Yeah.

>> Katie: Can you talk a little bit about that? And like, why that decision?

>> Joe: Short answer. I think it like I never want to hurt anybody's feelings. I think bad reviews are press in general, but really, I just want to make sure that our website is really browsable for readers. First and foremost, I want readers to be able to go on there and see, like, Wow, that cover not only looks cool, but this story sounds amazing. And then you go to the next one and the story sounds good and the story sounds good. And you have, instead of just going to your local bookstore and just kind of scrolling your... when I would go to a bookstore, I usually would head in there, and I felt like I knew what I wanted to read. But then once I got there, it was like, Oh, you know what? There's a ton of books around here, and I would just head into Goodreads and scroll lists of like, What books should I be reading? And really, a lot of them were classics. Almost all of them were big five classic. So if you're going to a bookstore and you're ready to just scroll or if you're online and you want to make sure that you are going out of your way to support in the authors and small press authors, then you kind of need a database to tell you which are the good ones. There's a million books out there with self publishing. They're just happening all around. And if we could be the source for readers toe like, yes, I want to support them. Yes, I know they're good, and I know these are the books that are good. So long answer for the for the short answer of it's tough to send your book out to somebody and to hear that things aren't good about it and to share it with a ton of readers why they weren't good. There is room for feedback in books, but when it's already published, You're not going back to edit it really. You've already sent it out there, and I don't think it really benefits the author and we really care about the author.

>> Katie: Like I agree, Like, I mean also self published authors and Indie authors like They're Not, You know, we had an author on a couple episodes ago Nina Boutsikaris. Her book had just come out and we were talking about good and bad reviews. And like the literary part of us, is like criticism is good. Criticism moves culture. Criticism like does things. But I also get like the point where it's like small presses are already up against a mountain anyway, and so are self published authors and indie authors. And so it's like, What's the point of publishing a bad review on a book like, If it's really that bad, just like don't review it. Just like stop reading it.

>> Joe: Yeah. Just just stop reading it. It's OK.

>> Katie: They're not gonna get the publicity that, like you know, somebody publishing with Random House, I think it is like, totally fine to say like Okay, why did this book get published? Like Let's sit here and have, like dialogue about this.

>> Joe: Oh I love to talk about when stories don't work. It's like one of my favorite things. Give me a bad TV show or a bad movie to talk about and I'll be going for an hour and a half.

>> Katie: You guys do have a blog, right? Do you talk about some of those things on there?

>> Joe: Um, I plan on moving in the direction of movies and like, other forms of story and doing things like that. I never really want to bash anything. But if you can learn something from a bad story, because you can, you just know. Yeah, they hit these plot points, but was every plot point cliche down the road? And should I try to avoid that in my own writing? I think it's beneficial to jump into stuff like that.

>> Katie: Yeah, yeah, well, I do want to, like, focus a little bit on you and ask you about your personal like writing career in your life and things like that. When were you born? Just kidding (laughter) Start from the beginning. What led you personally here? And, like, what's kind of you're the trajectory of your writing career look like?

>> Joe: Yeah, freshman year of college, I took a comp course where we were asked to write a book.

>> Katie: Just write a whole book?

>> Joe: Yeah, right? Just like just right a novel. You'll figure it out. Instead of spending, like, persuasive argumentative and exposition. And just like doing the regular comp stuff, they asked us to write something creative and just get the words out kind of for the entirety of the class. And it was the best time I ever had. I had no idea that not only would I like it, but some of the stuff kind of came out sounding okay.

>> Katie: Yeah

>> Joe: I still remember a lot of it. It is not good. Nobody should ever read that. I think I burned it.

>> Katie: That was the first time you ever written.

>> Joe: First time I've ever written was freshman year of college. And then I got pretty into it. So after I graduated. So I was writing all throughout college. And then after I graduated, I noticed that a literary magazine was hiring volunteer readers. A brand new literary magazine, Indianola Review and their defunct now.

>> Katie: Oh really? Did that just recently happen?

>> Joe: Maybe a little bit ago.

>> Katie: I swear I thought I saw they were.... Is there one that has, like, a similar name to them?

>> Joe: Probably.

>> Katie: Okay.

>> Joe: Yeah, I still have no idea what it's based on. I know it's a town somewhere. I just don't know. But I learned an insane amount from working on that magazine. I worked with some really talented editors, and I got to see the submissions that were coming in and figuring out why they weren't working well and hearing the other readers on the team saying the same things that I was saying in saying and realizing that I, like, also realized what's going on here? Why aren't these stories working? And what can I do in my own fiction to try to fix that? And so I was writing for short fiction journals for a little while, had plenty of rejections and got lucky with a few online Mags and then started working on my novel. Once we moved up to Rhode Island, I was a secondary at English major in college and realized very quickly that teaching was not a thing for me.

>> Katie: Oh, yeah? Most people who teach do not realize that it's not for them.

>> Joe: Yeah, or they do and then you stick it out. Anyway, I root for them to quit. Just get out of there. But Jalen and I were planning on moving in together, and we were gonna either do it in Pennsylvania or just go somewhere else and give it a shot. So we moved up to Rhode Island and just became servers because we still didn't really know what we were doing.

>> Katie: When was this?

>> Joe: 2016. And that's when I started. My novel hung out there for a year and served. And then we moved to Oregon when I started serving there as well, until I saw on Craigslist that Inkwater press was looking for a marketing director and I was really, really, really always interested in getting into publishing. It didn't matter what I just wanted to be around books and so found that, and I got the job and got some incredible experience over there not only with understanding how the publishing world works, but getting better throughout the entire time working on my own book. And then once we were ready to get out of Oregon. Great place over there literally scene is amazing there. Powells. I dream about it every day.

>> Katie: Oh yeah, AWP this year?

>> Joe: No, we left, right before like amateurs.

>> Katie: Yeah, my first year. It's nuts. I was, like dead when we came back.

>> Joe: It sounds like it's a social nightmare, like there's so many people around all the time.

>> Katie: It's like you take all the world's most awkward and people into a room and everybody just like, Oh, how do we interact that's not on Twitter? (laughter)

>> Joe: Witty remarks. So we hung out there for a little while, but realized we missed home. And so Pennsylvania is home, and we moved back and decided to give IBR a full time shot. And I started it back when I was in Oregon, but then once we came over here, I was time to sit down and make sure that I was giving it all the time that it deserved.

>> Katie: I have more questions about your trajectory and everything. But I think maybe if you if you feel like reading, do you feel like reading?

>> Joe: Sure. Yeah, I can read for you.

>> Katie: Let's hear some of your novel since we've been talking about it. OR you can read something else.

>> Joe: Yes. I'm gonna be reading from the novel. I've been working on it for, like many years. Five probably. Yeah. I started the story a while ago.

>> Katie: How finished is it?

>> Joe: Finished four drafts. Right now, I am working on cleaning up the middle and cleaning up about like the 3/4 version are the 3/4 point. So I'm hoping once I clean up that middle and clean up the 3/4 it will be a line at it or two away from submitting. So are you gonna go the agent route?

>> Katie: I want to.

>> Joe: Yeah, and I, uh I love small presses. I want to submit only to small presses, but at the same time Big five publishers. That is the way to get the word out as much as possible.

>> Katie: Let's not lie. You and I would both take that paycheck for sure. (laughter) All right, Cool.

>> Joe: Well, all right, So here, Here's "The Thing About Ronnie". Here's Chapter one.

=======================

Chapter 1

Ronnie lay on his belly in the grass of the front yard, the mud smearing his t-shirt every time he moved. He felt dirty and heavy this way, like the mud was concrete, like it would stick to his shirt and his skin beneath and he’d never be able to shake it.

On any other day, this feeling would bother him. He would run inside and not cry and stand under the shower with his clothes on. But today, he kept digging in the grass beside Grandma’s garden. Keeping some of the yard with him didn’t sound so bad.

Arthur the earthworm, who had been living in the garden, curled in Ronnie’s cupped left hand. He slid around the walls of Ronnie’s fingers, slimy and wet, trying to find his way out. Ronnie held him tight, giving him air-holes. He whispered the same words to Arthur that Grandma had said last week, “You’re gonna like your new home,” and “Everything is going to be just fine.”

Ronnie stacked small pieces of broken sidewalk along the circular hole in the grass, building walls with them, the beginning of a ceiling. But the pieces kept falling down.

This made Arthur happy. He danced in Ronnie’s hand.

         In his best Grandpa voice, Ronnie tried explaining to Arthur that he was sorry he had to move, that it wasn’t his fault. But Ronnie would take good care of him now, in his new home. That was what parents were supposed to do.

Mom and Dad had been living with Ronnie, Grandma, and Grandpa for about two weeks now. They’d been doing real good ever since they got back. Nice. Fun. All the good things and none of the bad. That far-away place had fixed them like it was supposed to.

When Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa sat him down on the couch last week and told him they’d be moving to a new house, he hadn’t known Grandma and Grandpa wouldn’t be coming with them. He learned that last night, after Dad came stumbling home.

Today, while Ronnie was digging, the front door opened and closed real fast.

Ronnie knocked more pieces of sidewalk into the hole, but this time by accident. Grandma and Grandpa walked the fastest toward their boxy white car in the driveway. They said something Ronnie couldn’t hear.

Grandpa ducked into the not-driver seat, and Grandma shut the door for him. Before she could get to the driver’s side door, she saw Ronnie staring and stopped.

Ronnie looked down at the hole. He dropped Arthur inside of it, maybe just a little too hard.

“We gotta go to the doctor’s, okay, bud?” she called, walking over. “Grandpa’s heart hurts again.”

Ronnie didn’t answer. He stacked the pieces of sidewalk along the hole. That way, he didn’t have to see her face, remind himself of what he wouldn’t have for much longer.

She kissed the top of his head. She was always real good at that. “Mom and Dad are gonna watch ya until we get back, okay?”

He made his pointer finger into a worm and slunk around the hole with Arthur.

“Ronnie?”

The car horn beeped for real long. Ronnie jumped a little bit. Arthur did, too.

Grandpa leaned his head back against the seat cushion, his hand pressed to his chest. Ronnie thought he could hear Grandpa’s heart monitor beeping from the garden. Loud. Fast. Loud. But that was probably just in his head.

Grandma raced back to their car. When she got to the driver’s side door, she waved at Ronnie and then ducked in.

Ronnie didn’t wave back. Instead, he turned to Arthur, who squirmed around the hole, trying to find a comfy spot. He tried sliding his head through a hole in the dirt one time, but he couldn’t get far. He just turned and circled the hole again, looking for a new way out.

         It might have been a million seconds or it might have been two before the front door swung closed again, a loud clanking noise. Dad walked fast, fast, fast, toward his orange car, two bulky black trash bags in his hands. Mom came stumbling behind him, dragging her trash bags through the dirt. He tossed his bags into the backseat, then grabbed Mom’s and did the same. When she turned around, she smiled and waved at Ronnie.

Ronnie waved back.

Dad headed toward the house with a far-away look in his eyes. He might’ve seen Ronnie, but he might not have, too.

Ronnie smiled just in case.

         Mom stood tall in super-tight blue jeans and a tucked-in t-shirt. When she got close enough, Ronnie saw red spots under her eyes, like she’d been rubbing them hard. She smiled a school-picture smile and said, “You wanna go for a trip, dude?”

         When the front door closed and Dad was gone for sure, he asked, in silent speak, if everything was okay, if this was a bad thing.

         She smiled at him, not showing her teeth.

         He said, “Okay,” softly.

         “Just a few more bags, okay?”

         Ronnie nodded. He watched her disappear through the front door, and then turned back to the hole. Arthur’s leg, or bottom half, was crushed beneath pieces of sidewalk. They had fallen in again. Or maybe Ronnie had pushed them. He picked them up quickly, telling Arthur how sorry he was, how it wouldn’t happen again. He placed the pieces back around the hole where they belonged.

         Arthur slid around in a tight circle, like a dog getting ready to pee, and then he stood on his leg. He aimed his face right at Ronnie and said, “It’s okay. I like you still.”

Ronnie smiled wide. Most six-year-olds didn’t know how to talk to worms, but that was a thing about Ronnie: he could make things happen when he really, really needed them to.

The first time Ronnie made a magic thing happen, he was living in his small, dirty house with Mom and Dad only. He was four years old, and Mom and Dad and Ronnie were almost always having a very fun time.

But Mom and Dad started doing a lot of bad things after a while. And one day, Dad ran away with the car. Mom cried alone in her bedroom. When Ronnie knocked to see if maybe he could get her a Band-Aid, she yelled at him like a so-loud thing.

His eyes filled with water real fast. Mom flipped face-down onto her bed, screaming into her pillow. The water spilled down his cheeks, puddling at his feet. A few seconds later, water crashed through the bedroom window and started filling the whole room. First, it just covered his feet. Then his knees. Then Mom wasn’t on the bed anymore. She was swimming around the room, goggles and a snorkel on, moving her arms back and forth like on TV.

Ronnie had run down the hallway and let the water chase him. Even though he was scared about it at first, he made the whole world better by letting it happen. The water felt warm on his toes. His chest. His face. And pretty soon, he was swimming, too.

When the front door opened at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, Dad came out and said, “Get in the car, Pigpen.”

         Ronnie stood real fast, so quick that nobody could ever be mad at him.

         Dad walked toward the driver’s side.

Ronnie ran toward the back.

Mom dragged one final trash bag through the grass and tossed it into the backseat. Before he got in the car, he stopped. Turned around. He almost said, “Wait,” aloud. He sprinted back to the hole and bent down and whispered, “Can you tell Grandma and Grandpa that we’ll be back soon?” They didn’t like it when he left without telling.

         “Ronnie!” Mom called.

         “Bye, Arthur!”

He jumped in the back of the car and squeezed himself between the too-full, so-soft black trash bags. When Mom closed the door behind him, Ronnie looked into the rearview mirror, searching for Dad’s eyes. He wanted to check real quick if maybe the bad things weren’t coming with them, but he couldn’t see a thing.

=======================

>> Joe: That's it.

>> Katie: Whoa! What's happening with Ronnie? There's some magical realism there.

>> Joe: Yeah.

>> Katie: So what was the impetus for the story? Why this story?

>> Joe: I started out. So when I'm the substitute teaching, I had this one kid who was 15 and who always talked about his parents like he loved them. And they were like, the coolest people. But then, at the same time, I overheard him talking to his friends and, like, mentioned that he likes slept under a bridge one night and he didn't really make that connection.

>> Katie: He slept under a bridge one time?

>> Joe: Yeah, yeah, I mean, he was He was talking to his friends and let them know that he likes snuck out and slept under a bridge. And I was like, there's a sadness there. And there's like a scared nous there, even though he wasn't like making the connection between, like, these parents who he talks about, like they're the coolest people he's ever been, told me that he loves them like so much. But then they're clearly doing something to him that is bothering him, and he wants to get out. But he kind of like, can't put together that right? So I started out telling his story when he was 15 and then kind of realized that his story started a lot earlier than that. And then I had a little fun with just the idea of using more magic realism. And so basically a thing about Ronnie is about where he finds a portal in the back of his apartment closets wall but is not a portal. It's just the whole leading to the apartment next door. So he thinks that world over there is really great for him because there's people over there who aren't his parents behind. Yeah, and so there's a nice little, uh, nice little play on basically, something that he wants is real and attainable. It's just like he has to guard himself from his real life. Yeah, it's been a really fun ride, getting to know him as a character.

>> Katie: So if you consider it literary?

>> Joe: I started it as literary just cause that's what I know. And so playing around with the idea of it being middle grade at this point because he's so young. Um, and I know middle grade can also have a few darker elements, which is included with the with the poor parent treatment. So I have a feeling I'll be moving in the middle grade direction. But as of right now, I'd probably call it literary.

>> Katie: So have you already had beta readers and editorial readers and everything on it?

>> Joe: Yeah, I've had one round of beta readers, and I've been a part of plenty of critique groups where you talk in person, and get to know how people are responding in person, which was really fun.

>> Katie: How do those go?

>> Joe: Great. I mean, really, I've known throughout all the critique groups that the story isn't done because there's plenty of work to do, and I know that I kind of want to get it right. So what it really did for me the most was kind of just give me the inspiration to keep on going, hearing people in person telling me that that things there are going in a good direction and they're interested in the story just feels nice.

>> Katie: What small presses do you know that like work on middle grade?

>> Joe: I don't even have a list. Unfortunately. Throughout most of my research, I pay a lot of attention to the genre stuff that my viewers read and not as many people are jumping into middle grade and YA as I thought, because they really are such fun genres. I don't know if you've read much, but it's just a bunch of stuff happens all the time in the language isn't hard. That's great. I love that you make it easy for me and entertainment at the same time. I love movies with little kid characters.

>> Katie: Cool. Well anybody shopping around looking for middle grade fiction...

>> Joe: Hey, call me up. I'm available. (laughs)

>> Katie: I'm really interested in this aspect. Like you. I mean, right now you're mostly doing this freelance and editorial work, right? For your living?

>> Joe: Yes.

>> Katie: How did you build that up? How long did it take and like, what kind of work did you have to put in? Cause I'm sure, like most people, most writers are like, Yeah, I would rather do that kind of work then serve or a lot of people than teach or things like that.

>> Joe: So I started in April 2018 and what I realized at Inkwater was people were paying for sponsored book reviews, a ton of money. So, like Kirkus is $475 for one like 500 word review, And it just kind of like it hurts my feelings. But it also puts me in a position where I know that like, I can write a great review for somebody. I can make it useful for them. And I don't have to break their bank because they're probably not gonna... They might not make $600 their entire time. So I prettied up the website it with the help of Jalen and everything looked nice and made sure that it was reader friendly first and foremost, and people started coming for those sponsored book reviews. And then I reached out to a publisher called Paper Raven Books. And so, in addition to doing those reviews and doing editorial work, developmental editing.

>> Katie: How much are your reviews?

>> Joe: My paid reviews are $59 so those I moved away from sponsored book reviews and went to editorial or book reviews, which is, first and foremost, an unpublished review where you and take quotes from the review and use it for your marketing material. Mostly because I care a ton about the interface of the website and and I don't want to make sure that all the books that we put up there are something that we would recommend to readers and for sponsored book reviews you have to publish that regardless. Yeah, and so we moved away from that. If we like the book, if our reviewer likes your book, then we published the review, so we just can't guarantee it. So 59 bucks and you and you get those quotes that you're looking for in five weeks. And it's been a really wonderful experience so far. A lot of people have been really happy, but it's nice being able to provide that for them.

>> Katie: Back to your freelance, though, where we were interrupted by the siren.

>> Joe: So I get about half my income from my IBR work: from editorial reviews from my developmental editing, my editorial letters and then the other half of my income comes from a company called Paper Raven Books where I'm the the back cover blurb and metadata specialists. Kind of doing the research into which keywords which categories author should be using when their self publishing. And so we submit them. I use I guess I call a tool that basically helps me realize what people are searching and which ones would most benefit us to use as categories for that book I do blurb and metadata specialist. And then I'm also the book review targeter. The Amazon Book review targeter.

>> Katie: Oh wow.

>> Joe: Yeah, so reaching out to plenty of people after the book has already been published. To see if we can get upwards of I mean always reaching for a goal of like, 25 plus. But some reviewers disappear.

>> Katie: Yeah isn't 25+ on Amazon like the target? Like you have to have that in order to be started appearing on certain lists.

>> Joe: Yeah, 25 is a big one. Which sucks. I hate that. I'll go on during my research to try to find small press books, and I read a small press book and it's incredible one of the best books I've ever read and has three reviews on there.

>> Katie: I know it's frustrating. If your friend writes a book then go review it, please. We're already we're sending out our people on it. You have too. You guys were just doing such important work for small presses. And like we're saying this a lot on our tour last week, So are our literary tour that we did in collaboration with Another presses that we were going to these local bookstores and talking with folks and the bookstore's about their communities. And how, like book local bookstores aren't just bookstores, their places of community. They really curate their stores in a way that, like Barnes and Noble's not. And when you walk in there, they're gonna be able to pinpoint you titles that you would never have come across just on your own finding, which is like what small presses are doing as well, like they're finding writing that you would never find otherwise. And so we're really just trying to, like, talk to people about because most people when they open a book, unless they're a publisher or involved in publishing in some way, do not look at who published the book. They don't care. They just want a good story. So you guys were really doing that work of helping them find that good story, which is amazing. I mean, we need, like there's no other service like yours, right? That caters just to small presses?

>> Joe: So Foreward has a similar plan that we do, but again, there have a ton of sponsored book of views on there, so their website provides all of those for them, and I'm really thankful. First, it's difficult unless you pay them to actually get reviewed from them. Yeah, especially if you're a very small press. Some presses have been around for a while, and they've been building and building, but I'm thinking more about the people who are just starting. People who have four people on their team and don't have books they've sent to Foreward and Foreward trusts them already, so you don't review them for free. So we're just a step earlier than Foreward, I would say love what they're doing over there, and they're a big part of why we were doing it. But they also have different variations in terms of since they do sponsored book reviews, their website isn't necessarily a scroll Herbal. All the books are good. Every book they love and every book they would recommend. Ours doesn't do that. So it's a little different.

>> Katie: Well, cool. You guys just moved to Philadelphia?

>> Joe: We're moving in a month.

>> Katie: What's the Philly scene like? What's the Philly literary community like?

>> Joe: So we just came from Portland and Portland was pretty amazing with their literary scene. But Philly's just so... the literary community really does stick together there. There's, um so I know. So Eric Smith lives in Philly. Uh, sorry if I'm calling you out or anything but plenty of small press authors. Plenty of literal organization like Blue Stoop is incredible literary organization for writers, and everything is kind of burgeoning right now there's plenty of people who are coming together. And I think AWP will be in Philly in a year or two.

>> Katie: Oh really?

>> Joe: Yeah, After Austin, I think they're coming in Philly. And plenty of presses. Split Lip Press is out there. The press is based out of Philly. Atticus Review is based in Philly as well, right?

>> Katie: Yeah, they are. Cool. We're excited to see what kind of collaborations and things you guys start doing with the community there.

>> Joe: Yeah, I'm excited. This is the first time anybody has heard my voice (laughter) so hopefully we'll see my face at one point, and I think they probably will in Philly if you come on out.

>> Katie: So where can folks go to check out the work? What do you want them to do?

>> Joe: Yeah. Well, first and foremost head over to Independent Book Review dot com and get yourself scrolled. And I think you'll find a lot of books that you like there. And if you're a writer, have her head over to our "for author" section to because in addition to the author service is that you free to go ahead and take a look at and ask me questions about. We also published material that specifically for writers. So today we publish something on self editing for fiction. Writers head in there and just learn a little bit. We have stuff for literary organizations that might be in your area. We have different classes that are set up just for you. You'll have plenty of different opportunities to learn about book marketing on our website. You'll learn about editing on our website, and while I'm one of the one of the few people who is putting out the blogs as of right now on our website, we're only gonna continue to grow. So if you get to know us now, you're gonna go ahead and learn a ton during your writing process. So Independent Book Review dot com for you. Head over to Jalen's Independent book Review Instagram page, because she's doing a hell of a job.

>> Katie: Yeah, I saw that.

>> Joe: You'll be able to to see a bunch of really awesome new books and books that are coming in the mail for us in the bookstores in probably your area that you should take a look at. So that's Independent Book Review on Instagram on Twitter were indeed book view on Facebook were Independent Book Review. And then we also run a Facebook group as well. Called on writing Where you'll be able to just kind of talk thio us. Let us know if you have questions. And then, in addition, you'll be asking, As of right now, it's a little small. We got about, like, 250 people in our group, But everybody's kind of talking. Every is getting to know each other, and we're only going to get more personal and just helpful down the road.

>> Katie: So awesome. Really great resources for writers.

>> Joe: I think so.

>> Katie: Thank you so much for being here, Joe. And for doing what you do. This is a huge service to small presses.

>> Joe: Absolutely. I can't wait to see more from Animal Riot as you grow too. Thanks for having me.

>> Katie: Yeah, absolutely.  Okay that’s it for today’s episode. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and review on whichever platform you’re listening. You can get in touch with us on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram at @AnimalRiotPress, or through our website animalriotpress.com. This has been the 32nd episode of the Animal Riot Podcast with me, Katie Rainey, your stand-in host for Brian Birnbaum. Thanks to our special guest Joe Walters of Independent Book Review. Our transcripts for our Deaf and Hard of Hearing Animals are provided by Jon Kay, this episode was edited by our podcast assistant Dylan Thomas, and we're produced by me, Katie Rainey. See ya later, ya filthy animals.