The Publishing Deal: behind the scenes with publisher, publicist and author, Kelly Doust

Hosts Tina Strachan and Natasha Rai interview publishing professional and author Kelly Doust about her two-decade career across major and independent publishers, writing eight books, and launching Publishing Curious after redundancy to educate authors via a Substack and one-on-one services (strategy calls, pitch development, manuscript assessment). Kelly explains why publishing can feel opaque, compares indie versus major houses (advances vs attention and lead-title status), and urges writers to join communities and educate themselves. She outlines acquisitions meetings (key roles include publishing, sales, marketing/publicity, and sometimes finance) and notes lists and schedules shift. She discusses what drives sales—sharp hooks, targeted retailers (including Big W and deep-discount stores), endorsements, author engagement—and changing bestseller benchmarks (5,000 as the new 10,000). The episode also covers parallel importation, lobbying government, and AI’s impacts on submissions, workflows, and creator protections. 00:00 Podcast Intro 00:56 Meet Kelly Daoust 02:01 Kelly Career Journey 04:22 Why Publishing Feels Opaque 06:49 Publishing Curious Services 09:20 Indies Versus Big Five 11:27 Building Writing Community 15:38 Inside Acquisitions Meetings 25:06 How Publishers Allocate Budget 29:38 Debut Novel Spotlight 31:39 Retail Reality Check 33:15 What Actually Sells 36:48 Defining Good Sales 37:50 Algorithms Vs Local Authors 39:42 Parallel Importation Explained 41:10 Lobbying And Creator Rights 42:15 AI In Submissions 44:47 AI Editing And Bias 50:34 AI Flooding Amazon 51:55 Kids Books Are Different 53:09 Back To Publishing 54:08 Best Advice For Debuts 56:47 No Formula For Bestsellers 58:24 Podcast Wrap Up Join our Patreon community (  / thebookdealpodcast  ) for less than the cost of a coffee per month and support the pod! Your contribution will go to directly paying our sound producer, Brogan, and to help us bring you the conversations with industry professionals you love. Follow The Book Deal podcast on Instagram The Book Deal podcast (@the_book_deal_podcast) • Instagram photos and videos (  / the_book_deal_podcast  ) You can find out more about Tina, Madeleine and Natasha and follow their journeys here: Tina Strachan (@td_strachan) • Instagram photos and videos (  / td_strachan  ) Tina Strachan children's book author (https://www.tinastrachan.com/about-ti...) Madeleine Cleary (@madeleineclearywrites) • Instagram photos and videos (  / madeleineclearywrites  ) Madeleine Cleary | Author (https://www.madeleinecleary.com.au/) Natasha Rai (@raiwriting) • Instagram photos and videos (  / raiwriting  ) Natasha Rai | Author | Mentor (https://www.raiwriting.com.au/) If you want to stay in the know, sign up to Madeleine, Tina and Natasha's newsletters for the latest news first. Madeleine: Subscribe here (https://madeleinecleary.substack.com/...) ...