Photo Courtesy of Riane Williams
Riane Williams, The Writing Club at FSU president, is a sophomore at Florida State University studying Public Health and Chinese. She also recently published her own novel, titled “Celest: Every Day is Closer to the End,” which can be found on Amazon.
The Trailblazer (TB): To start off, would you like to talk about your novel?
Williams: My novel, “Celest: Every Day is Closer to the End,” essentially, at its core, is about a young girl trying to learn how to grow up in the midst of a lot of family trauma, and also while dealing with depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts, but through the eyes of a younger person.
The internal battle going through the entire book, which the readers get to follow, is Celest asking herself: “Is it worth fighting for a life that she knows for sure will never get better? Or, is it a better option to end her life, and give another person the opportunity to fill her place in the world?
TB: What was your experience publishing the novel? I know you went the self-publishing route, what were the challenges associated with that?
Williams: So, I had an interesting journey. I finished the book the summer before college. I legally could not self-publish at that point because I was 17. I had to try to go into traditional publishing because then I could be able to get a contract with someone else’s signature.
I gave myself a year to market my book. If by the end of the year, I don’t get anything, I’m going to shelve the book and we’re just going to keep going. When contacting literary agents, I had this weird kind of phenomenon happen.
Usually, when you contact literary agents and they reject you, you don’t really interact with them. But, I kept getting personalized rejection letters. You can tell that someone took time to specifically call out stuff in my book, you could tell they had read it.
I was consistently getting literary agents that were saying: “Your book is at the industry, but I will not pick it up and my company will not pick it up, because it’s talking about anxiety, depression, and suicide for a younger audience.”
One of my very last rejection letters was two pages long. This publisher said, “This book is going to help a lot of people. You need to go get it published.”
I ended up going through Amazon, but I had to get all the artists myself, do all the editing myself, or get other people to do the editing, but also juggle that professional editors are a lot of money and I didn’t have that kind of money.
It’s about a three month span of me getting all this together, and then I hit publish. I had my opening book event at Books-A-Million, they shut down for an hour, and that’s where it started.
TB: When you talk about books not getting picked up by publishers because of those topics, it reminds me of book censorship and the reasons that books get censored. What are your thoughts on the issue of book censorship?
Williams: I think it does a lot of damage. I wrote this book because this book didn’t exist when I was younger. Now that I’ve been on the backend and gone through publishing, it’s not that no one ever wrote a book like that, it’s probably because it didn’t get published.
When you censor a lot of books, especially books about real topics, it isolates so many different people. I assumed people didn’t read these kinds of books: they’re out there, but the mass population doesn’t get a chance to read them.
TB: Is there another book in the works?
Williams: There are several.
TB: Do you think your first book has helped your process with the other books you’re trying to publish? Or has it made you a stronger editor or writer?
Williams: I will tell you that when I was starting the draft of my next project, the first thing that I did was create an outline – the biggest thing I learned from the first project. I had to start that book completely over, twice, before it came out.
Last week I received a letter from a couple that are 80-90 years old, saying how the book helped them. This kind of feedback gave me the confidence to write another one.
Until you put your work out there, you don’t know if it’s good or not. Family or friends can say whatever they want, but when other people say it’s great, I think this taught me to do an outline and gave me the confidence to do more projects.
TB: Are you going the self-publishing route?
Williams: I like it better because, first of all, I retain the rights to everything.
I have the freedom to try to push my books to target a certain demographic I’m trying to reach. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this before in an interview, but anything I don’t do for my book — the art, all of the editing — it’s all done by students I find. I love giving them the opportunity for their first big project.
I’ve had a great experience with it, and I will keep going that route unless someone has a really compelling argument to why I should traditionally publish. Their heart would have to be in the right place and not just trying to make money. Otherwise, I’m going to self-publish.
TB: How do you believe self-publishing has changed the industry?
Williams: I’ll start with the good things. I think that for people like me who otherwise wouldn’t be able to get their work out, it’s great. Especially with Amazon. It’s a big market. In theory, everyone could publish a book. In traditional publishing, it could take three years from the time between signing your book deal and the book coming out.
When you self-publish, once you hit publish, that thing is out there. I also think it’s nice for people who don't want to make writing their career. For people with writing as a passion project, self-publishing is amazing, or if you just have a niche topic.
The bad stuff: there’s a lot of A.I. It’s in the book covers, it’s in the text, it’s in everything.
I think I contacted three artists. Every single one of them said “I can’t do this without A.I.” The standard of the market is much lower now. You have pre-made covers, you have A.I. covers that people generate, and that takes away from everyone else.
Also, it’s not friendly for people who aren’t tech-savvy. You have to do everything yourself: when you self-publish, you own a business. If someone just has a passion project, they might not want to be a business owner. You also can’t be underage if you want to self-publish.
TB: This is a book six or seven years in the making. How good did it feel when you finally hit publish?
Williams: It felt really nice, but it also felt really weird, because once you’ve done something for six years…I’m only eighteen, which is a majority of my life, it’s weird to wake up and not have that project anymore. And it’s also weird to hand people a book and be like, “I wrote this!” It’s strange, but it’s a nice strange.
TB: Were you nervous to have your book out and have people read it?
Williams: No, I wasn’t, which I actually think is not common.
My friends and others, teachers, etc., had been following me for six years. Even if no one else liked the book, I knew this group of people I had accumulated over the years were going to read it. I was excited because I also felt like it was going to help a lot of people and, by the calls and the letters, it has, which makes me sleep at night.
TB: What do you think are the biggest barriers women and minorities may face when trying to go into traditional publishing?
Williams: As a flat answer, it’s racism and misogyny. The way it manifests though is that people won’t get deals that they’re qualified and overqualified to get. People will get underpaid for deals they’re qualified or overqualified to get paid more for.
Many minorities and women will be looked over. You’ll be in a room and instead of talking to you, you’ll be looked over and they’ll talk to your representative like you’re not even there.
It’s similar to how minorities and women are treated in the workplace. It translates completely over into traditional publishing. It’s just finding different excuses to devalue women and minorities, and basically anyone that’s not just a white guy.
TB: What kind of changes do you hope to see in the traditional publishing industry?
Williams: Literary agents need to be more accessible to more people. I had to dig to find the literary agents I did find that were in my genre and were willing to represent a black woman. They have a database called "My Manuscript Wish List" of active literary agents looking for people and I’d love to see a whole overhaul of that website.
If that were easier, and if we had more literary agents who have changed their ideals, that would be nice so we could have more accessibility to people who are writing. The feasibility of this is low, but a lot of other issues in traditional publishing are that for big publishers — as you don’t see this in small or local publishers — it’s all about money.
If I were to have traditionally published, the best case scenario would have been that I would have a small-time publisher align with my interests and push the book to the people I want to push it through.
For traditional publishing, a lot of it is just racism and misogyny, which is a whole other issue. It’s not, “Hey, let’s change this in the publishing industry,” it’s a “Let’s change this in general” and it’ll change in the publishing industry.
In self-publishing, I would love to see self-publishing more strictly moderated. I’d like to see moderation crack down more.
Also, not to say this isn’t true, I haven’t felt discriminated against while self-publishing. Theoretically, they just won’t read my book. If I’m contacting an artist, they’ll just say no. For self-publishing, besides the moderation, it just needs to continue to evolve.
I will say this: other platforms that aren’t Amazon or KDP have a U.I. issue. I did research and I still can’t do this. A U.I. overhaul in general would be nice.
TB: How have your experiences in the FSU Writing Club and as its president shaped your experiences at FSU and as an author?
Williams: First, I founded the club. I started it last spring. At the time, my book wasn’t out yet, so I’m starting this club, and this is within my one year that I’m marketing the book.
To be honest, I did not start the club for me. Our message, which has not changed, is that the club will do whatever it needs to do to support you and your own writing. It just brought me joy to inspire other people to finish their projects and say “Hey, you can do it!” At the time, I couldn’t say “I did it” because my book wasn’t out yet, but now that’s something I can do.
It definitely helped me as a writer because one of the big things within our club is that we all beta-read for one another. We have a very close and friendly group of beta readers. It’s nice to be able to do that because it connects me more to the writing community here and connects me to other clubs.
Also, after the involvement fair, we went from around 20 members to peaking around 150. The organization skills shot up. It helps me build skills that are important to being a small business owner.
Learning how to manage all these people in a way that caters to them, which is important to me, and playing with all their strengths and weaknesses. Also, trying to make their weaknesses their strengths at the same time. It also forces me to make time to work on my projects every week. Sometimes I don’t want to do it, but it gives me the space to do so.
TB: Last question. What advice do you have for aspiring authors?
Williams: One important thing is to always remind yourself why you’re writing, even if you’re not going to publish what you’re writing.
Even if you’re writing for yourself, that’s really powerful. Originally, I was not going to publish my book. I would also say to make sure you don’t get blinded by money. I have to check myself about that too. Stay true to your customers: your readers. Don’t do anything to them you wouldn’t want done to you.
I would also say that you can do it. If you don’t try, it’s a no. If you don’t try, you don’t know if you can do it. If you don’t try, you can’t, because you never tried. Just start. Write the first sentence. Write the second sentence. Maybe consider using an outline.
Surround yourself with people who believe in you. There are going to be people who tell you that you can’t do it. There are so many who told me I can’t. And well, look at me now.
You have to believe in yourself, but it’s important to have at least one person who is cheering you on. Even if you don’t have one person cheering you on, which was my situation, you can make that space yourself. If you’re an FSU student, there’s 100 of us, and you can come join our community.
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