[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to another episode of Shooting the Shirt with Literary Agents, Carly Waters, and CC Lyra.
[SPEAKER_02]: Where we dissect publishing gossip, discuss book industry trends, and the overall state of the book business.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you'd ever wanted to grab a coffee with two literary agents, grab your mug and pull up a chair.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello everybody welcome back another episode just with Carly and CC of shooting the shit We have a lot of fun stuff to talk about.
[SPEAKER_02]: I will say people have been sending us a lot of articles lately and a lot of them were the same few articles So we might talk about some of those today So if you're looking to see whether we're including your articles stay tuned to the end because we have lots of great links to chat about We've lots of juicy stuff, but let's start with our weekend CC how was here we can
[SPEAKER_01]: Ooh, so I, I'm trying to think of what I did.
[SPEAKER_01]: I went shopping, which was fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I worked on my upcoming class.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm teaching a class in October, writing tension.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I,
[SPEAKER_01]: was reviewing materials for the class and that was fun too.
[SPEAKER_01]: How about you?
[SPEAKER_02]: We should do my parents were here this weekend.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was nice.
[SPEAKER_02]: I spent a lot of times the hockey rank.
[SPEAKER_02]: My kids are in the process of what they call sort out.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's at their age.
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't call them triodes.
[SPEAKER_02]: They call them sort out.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they can sort them onto what team they're going to be on.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we worked on that.
[SPEAKER_02]: They got their team assignments yesterday.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we're ready for the next.
[SPEAKER_02]: eight months of being in the rank and I posted this in my Instagram stories and actually I'm Instagram Grid, which is I started all fours, ran to July's novel, and still not done, and so many of you DM'd me and were like, why don't you think about it or like, loved it, hated it, didn't finish it, can't wait to get your thoughts.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I'm still not done, but we can talk about that, and then this coming weekend, which by the time this airs, I will have already done this, but I am
[SPEAKER_02]: going to the DFW Dallas Fort Worth Writer's Conference.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I've been working on my keynote.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm holding it up here in the front of the camera.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm finishing it up.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is my ASMR of like, paper.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, why I was working on my keynote.
[SPEAKER_02]: My lunch keynote.
[SPEAKER_02]: That will have happened on Saturday.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you guys were listening to this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, that's kind of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just the normal kind of parenting, parenting stuff over here.
[SPEAKER_02]: So CCGD read-offers,
[SPEAKER_01]: I have not read all fours.
[SPEAKER_01]: I started reading it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Didn't get into it, but not because it wasn't good, but because it wasn't something that was spitting my mood at the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: When it comes to reading for fun, it has to fit my mood.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am doing a lot of...
[SPEAKER_01]: dense reading and I mean, dense in the best way possible for work.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm not gravitating towards dense stories right now, but I've heard wonderful things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you like it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you liking it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you're still reading it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, I've had a number of DM conversations with different people.
[SPEAKER_02]: So one of my friends in kind of industry colleagues, a publicist, Crystal Patriarch said, it's a mushroom trip of a novel.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, yeah, it is a mushroom trip of a novel.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm in the third section.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know how many sections there's are, you know, in terms of like part 1, 2, 3.
[SPEAKER_02]: I liked part 1 a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: Part 2.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, okay, I don't know where this is going.
[SPEAKER_02]: And now I'm in to part 3.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we'll, we'll see what my final analysis is.
[SPEAKER_02]: But one thing I've noticed and it could just be the books that I've gravitated towards this year.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was damning with somebody about this post author.
[SPEAKER_02]: I won't
[SPEAKER_02]: I won't tell you who because she was a do-not-finisher of this one.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was saying about how, apparently, the literary novels that I've been reading this year have been incredibly sexy, sex-oriented, sex-positive novels that I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they love the literary novels.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I read Skydad and all fours.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would say the more literary novels that I've read.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's really interesting because of the obviously the rise in romance novels.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's very, like, on the page, open door, sex off across the board and the romance category.
[SPEAKER_02]: literary category I would say in terms of books that people are talking about at least in my circles.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I don't know if that's the something about the books that are being marketed to me, what I'm choosing to pick up or the industry at large in terms of, you know, this movement towards, again, these more open door scenes, it's been a trip and I'm looking forward to finishing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It sounds interesting, and I look forward to picking it up again.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just finished spectacular things, which was wonderful.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like so good, the narrative style reminded me of lessons in chemistry, because there's a lot of head hopping.
[SPEAKER_01]: We go into other characters' heads, but in the same chapter.
[SPEAKER_01]: and the author does it with such a confidence and with such precise, assured writing, it's beautiful.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's ultimately the story of two sisters.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot about the mother as well, like the mother's relationship with each of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: family of women.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love stories about that and there's a lot of soccer stuff because the mother gave up a career.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, she got pregnant when she was a teenager and she was, you know, destined to the Olympics and gave up that career because she she became pregnant and she raises her daughters to live the dream that she never could.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of them, the youngest one is spectacular.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they're both really good, but the youngest one is spectacular.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's sacrifice, there's questions of parentification, and children.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just absolutely beautiful.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, although people know this, I'm not interested in watching sports.
[SPEAKER_01]: The whole sports as a background for novels is excellent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because there's so many juicy elements that come with it, you know, the competition that pushing yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: The whole sex.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the systemic issues like they're so much and so it's a wonderful thing for a novel so yay for sports and novels You're kidding get pitched some sports romances now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Look out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, if they're good, great She will have a lot of questions about equipment and how it works, but she likes the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that and any nonfiction that you're reading right now
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I'm interested, looking forward to reading Morgan Housel's new book, I think it's called the Art of Spending Money, I don't know, he wrote the psychology of money, he wrote same as ever, psychology money is one of my all-time favorites, loved same as ever as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just love anything psychology, you guys know this about me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And money is one of those things that because for so long people are like, we did not talk about money in polite society.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot to unpack when I come to dynamics and run money, how people spend, how people save, how people buy, how people make their money, and so on and so forth.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'm really looking forward to diving in, but again, there's so much like client reading to do that there's only so many books you can read in your own time I think it's think they're for fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are for fun, but they're also work, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like when we read a book that we are not associated with, I'm sure you agree.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're doing market research.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are, you know, It might be in inadvertently or not see it searching for cops for our own titles There's still work that goes into it, but it is I guess less active because I'm also not reading every sentence and worrying about like is this the right verb or anything like that
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, and that's when books turn into a do not finish for me because if I feel like I've doing work reading, if I'm like, oh, I wouldn't have done this differently or made a different choice, then it's usually do not finish for me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Books that I finish are like the highest in endorsement because I don't finish a lot of books just because again, there's so much client reading to do so many other things going on.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, it's it's very interesting to be able to put that hat on and read for fun, which again, if you work in the industry, the ability
[SPEAKER_01]: for sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_02]: All righty.
[SPEAKER_02]: So where should we start today?
[SPEAKER_02]: As I said, we have lots of really good little tidbits and articles that were dropped to us DMs.
[SPEAKER_02]: How do we feel about starting with publicity because somebody sent you a DM about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I got a DM that essentially said, I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but like I'm wondering if you all might consider clarifying the whole hiring of publicist thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: This publicity something that would be addressed in an initial contract is this for folks who think their publisher isn't doing enough, so the hire someone to give it an extra push, is it becoming an expectation?
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are also lots of nice things in that message too, but just for the purposes of time, I won't read everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: But again, I,
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually joined Eric Smith's Discord yesterday, evening at 8 p.m.
[SPEAKER_01]: He has a Discord channel with authors and he invited me for an ask me anything session.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the first question or one of the first questions was also about publicity.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was, you know, I'm hearing that a lot of people are hiring their own publicists.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like why do they do this if they have publicists that work for the book?
[SPEAKER_01]: Inside the publisher, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's an important question.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a lot to cover.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know we both have very strong feeling about publicity.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what would you say is like the biggest misconception do you think?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, we can dedicate a whole lot to this topic.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, all of it is it's so hard because especially for so we got to talk about like the debut author experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: We got to talk about a mid list author experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: We got to talk about, you know, maybe somebody that gets a higher advance experience because they're all so incredibly different.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think one of the hardest things about debut authors is.
[SPEAKER_02]: You only gave you one, so there's a lot of pressure on this, so a lot of times authors do hire for their debut because they're like, I mean, I might be reinvesting most of my advance if not all of my advance into this, but the only debut once, but it's like they also don't know what they don't know and they don't know what questions to ask, they don't know maybe what their skills are in terms of what they can bring to the table to be a good partner and creating this publicity because a lot of times writers will say, I want publicity for this book, and it's like, okay,
[SPEAKER_02]: What could pass you what are your goals?
[SPEAKER_02]: What are you looking for because when we think publicity a lot of times we'll think like is it magazine coverage is it morning show coverage You said just you want more influencers to be holding up your book.
[SPEAKER_02]: What is the actual goal because the goal essentially should be a couple things brand building and sales
[SPEAKER_02]: right, those are the two things we're looking for with publicity.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so with the brand building piece, sometimes it's that it's not always that the coverage is actually going to contribute to more sales happening for that book.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's establishing you as an author in that category creating brand awareness.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that may be again with your next two, three, four books, somebody like, oh yeah, I read but so I'm so in this magazine.
[SPEAKER_02]: And
[SPEAKER_02]: and therefore I'm going to pick it up next time.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not always about like the conversion of that sale.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's about building the brand recognition of brand awareness within the industry at large.
[SPEAKER_02]: The next piece of sales, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: A lot of times when we say, I want more publicity, what we're really saying and I say we as like a general industry is that we're looking for the conversion of eyeballs to sales.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a really hard thing to quantify, to manage expectations around.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why this whole Lucy Goosey should I hire?
[SPEAKER_02]: What's the right price point?
[SPEAKER_02]: Who's actually going to move the needle on my book?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, that's why everybody's always floundering with this question, because there's no magic answer.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so a lot of it is about the partnership of the author and the publicist, are the goals aligned?
[SPEAKER_02]: What is the author going to bring to the table in terms of writing essays or how much they want to get out there?
[SPEAKER_02]: Or is it a podcast tour?
[SPEAKER_02]: and how can we kind of divorce the amount of money that we're spending on publicity, you know, as an author or at, you know, impolishing out large from the eventual outcome.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we don't always need an external publicist to achieve all these things.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it feels like if I can do something then I can contribute to this eventual outcome and again, the goal of the conversion.
[SPEAKER_02]: What do you think, CC?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think that when it comes to hiring an independent publicist versus
[SPEAKER_01]: relying on the publicist that you are assigned to the best thing to do is to first not think of it as a versus, you know, that's how people think of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They think of it as one versus the other because like this person asked the question is it because
[SPEAKER_01]: that in house publicists aren't doing a good enough job and I don't think that that's the point right I think that it comes down to you just adding more troops to your army that's that's what it is and it's really important to remember that there are professions and services that carry an obligation of result meaning the guarantee results.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are professions and services that carry an obligation of means.
[SPEAKER_01]: And publicity is very much the latter.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an obligation of means.
[SPEAKER_01]: Meaning they will endeavor their best efforts.
[SPEAKER_01]: They'll put in a whole bunch of effort and pitch your book.
[SPEAKER_01]: But at every stage in the publishing process, there are more people pitching than there are people buying.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so a publicist is going to pitch your book to various media outlets, you know, to, you're going to reach out to influencers.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're going to do a whole bunch of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: But remember that there isn't a spot for everyone who's being
[SPEAKER_01]: It's always a situation where the numbers get harder and harder.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I say this not to discourage people, but to adjust their expectations.
[SPEAKER_01]: Something that I think, and you touched on this, and Carly, but
[SPEAKER_01]: Before you even wonder, why do people hire a publicist?
[SPEAKER_01]: I would do research on publicity.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is publicity?
[SPEAKER_01]: How's it different from marketing?
[SPEAKER_01]: Who has used the publicist before?
[SPEAKER_01]: Who in your network is an author?
[SPEAKER_01]: Who has hired a publicist?
[SPEAKER_01]: What was their experience talked to them?
[SPEAKER_01]: Research very as publicity firms.
[SPEAKER_01]: Take a look at what they do, but they don't do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Take a look at their niches, take a look at their expertise.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that doing that big, big research, which we'll take hours, if not days, is important so that you're not going into it with very broad questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: because this is true for everything really when it comes to life, not just publishing, but if you do your own research before asking an expert question, you will ask better questions and you'll get better results.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I mean, I definitely think that it depends on each person's financial situation as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like publicity is expensive and again, there's no guarantee of any results.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know authors who have hired publicists and they're like, that money was wasted.
[SPEAKER_01]: that's how they feel.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I know authors who have hired politicians and they really loved it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just depends on each situation.
[SPEAKER_01]: The number one thing though, like the most important takeaway that I really really wish every author out there understood is, you are not hiring someone to do the work for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not.
[SPEAKER_01]: you are hiring someone to do the work with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you will still have to do a lot of the work.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want you to be able to answer questions like, what op-eds could you write?
[SPEAKER_01]: But what articles could you pitch to magazine?
[SPEAKER_01]: What magazines publish dates articles, these articles that you want to have published?
[SPEAKER_01]: What other books are out there and what strategies they adopt?
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you think that it's your job as the client to sit back while people feature this information while people say, oh, here are the op-eds you could write?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not how it works.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are very much expected.
[SPEAKER_01]: whether you hire an independent publicist or not, to do a lot of this mental work and to come up with all these great ideas or else your publicity efforts are going to be like cut and paste.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, they're going to be like, what we would do for a book of this type, which is fine, but I don't think that's a smart way to go about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's really important to sit down, put on your PR hat and really think about this as a business.
[SPEAKER_01]: In creative work,
[SPEAKER_01]: the labor comes when the work is being created, meaning when the words are being written.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then once that's that part's over, the work is kind of like taken over by other people, your team, why go with traditional publishing, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're actually still expected to be doing all the work.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're actually not all the work, that's not true.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you're actually still expected to be doing a lot of the work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Most of the work, because it is your book, there's one name on that cover.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think that's something to keep in mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think people do it because the in-house policies are doing a bad job at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think people do it because they want to large your army.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, I think that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's tons of things that we can pull out in terms of those threads, as I said, I've given our long talks on this.
[SPEAKER_02]: We could talk about this topic for an hour, but if there is anything that you want us to go a bit deeper in that conversation, send us a DM and we'll try to build on that conversation as we as we move through the many weeks to come of shooting the shit.
[SPEAKER_02]: The next thing I wanted to ask you about because I think about this all the time is, so I've been doing this a certain number of years now and I'm starting to get to the point and this mid career phase where I'm finding it really hard to give advice to newer agents to give advice to younger agents and I was talking about this with an with an editor to come on it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, this is it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was talking about this with an editor in the context of like her trying to give advice to younger editors as well and I was like, I'm actually finding it really hard because.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the landscape has changed a lot in terms of agent starting out is what I'm trying to focus on.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if I was to say like, if I go back to the beginning of when I started, the advice that I might give is very different because like, doesn't actually relate now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it actually harder to be an agent now?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I don't know your kind of newer into the agent world than I am.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I don't know, do you feel this at all?
[SPEAKER_02]: Are you starting to feel this because I felt as soon as I hit like year 10 and became so hard for me to
[SPEAKER_02]: Start to remove the knowledge that I have now and kind of because I love teaching you this is nonsense No, this is nonsense you're wrong.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is true.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, no, no, because you are because you gave advice and you gave me great advice Okay, so I know you're good at giving advice at your 10 like now.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is nonsense.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I'm You know like we're not gonna edit this out because it's actually really funny, but no you're great at giving advice You give wonderful advice.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're always asking people to name their goals.
[SPEAKER_01]: You make it personal to each person that you're talking to no
[SPEAKER_01]: it might be hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: I believe you, but you still give it a good place.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's hard or now.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess it's just hard for me to feel like I can relate to that like anxiety and energy that people feel early on in their career about making their way as an agent.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I guess this comes back to the theme that I keep coming back to.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe it's part of that like hustle culture, mindset thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there a way to for me to give advice and dependant of that?
[SPEAKER_02]: No, just like
[SPEAKER_02]: work seven days a week.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's fine.
[SPEAKER_02]: All you're drinking?
[SPEAKER_02]: No, true because there's healthy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's no way to give advice about being an agent and not talk about hustle, like, you just can't be independent of hustle, culture.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel very strongly about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not honest advice anyway.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the reason why your advice is good advice is because it's honest, but no, I think, you know, when people ask people ask you all the time, they ask me all the time, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like,
[SPEAKER_01]: There are a few things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think one, I try to always say the biggest truth of all, which is, it is the best job in the world, like it is such a wonderful job, like it is amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: However, amazing, you're picturing it is, it's actually better.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a good imagination, it's even better than I thought it would be.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's great.
[SPEAKER_01]: The second thing I say, because my goal is always to inspire and depress, is we have to have a frank conversation about money.
[SPEAKER_01]: How long it takes to make money.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, once you start making money, it's great.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so great, especially because again, a book can be adapted into many things and that part's awesome, but it's really important to have a frank conversation about money.
[SPEAKER_01]: The third thing I talk about are the soft skills.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of soft skills that are needed to become an agent.
[SPEAKER_01]: People tend to focus on the hard skills.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do I need an English degree?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do I need to have gone to publishing school?
[SPEAKER_01]: The soft skills matter more than anything else.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's true in many professions, especially ours.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are the one who taught me this actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: The importance of having a memorable personality.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I had never thought about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you once said to me, like, we're talking about a different person.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were like, this person is memorable.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think they might struggle.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember thinking, oh my god, it's so true, you have to be memorable because if you're not memo, like so much of it is the relationship, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so many agents, you're just going to blur into the background and that's that's hard to to know about oneself, but you know, self-awareness, I guess, importance.
[SPEAKER_01]: The other thing too is you can not have a passive personality.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have often asked myself this question.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're a passive person, do you know you're a passive person?
[SPEAKER_01]: One of my best friends in life, Childhood Best Friend, is a deeply deeply passive person.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's a lovely human, lovely human.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's a very passive person.
[SPEAKER_01]: She waits for things to happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: This does not bother her at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: She leads a wonderfully happy life.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's surrounded by people who are not passive at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: It works for her.
[SPEAKER_01]: People are always describing her as easygoing and easy to be around.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because she is.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's a very easygoing person.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you want to be an agent, you cannot be a passive person.
[SPEAKER_01]: You need to make things happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't wait for the thing to happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: You need to find a way to make it happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are people who have this drive this force inside of them, where when they're faced with obstacles, it's hard and I'm not saying they don't struggle.
[SPEAKER_01]: you're just going to find a way to do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You might pivot, you might find, your destination might change a little not the ultimate one, but like the way you do it, it's important to have the mental flexibility, but that soft skill is really, really important.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the fourth thing I'll say is this, I always know if someone is cut out to be an agent or not in part based on how prepared they come to the informational interviews.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if I'm having to explain things like advances are paid out in thirds or fourth if I'm having to explain really basic things in an informational interview it tells me you have not done research and that suggests that you might be a passive person you are going into an informational interview.
[SPEAKER_01]: with really open-ended broad questions and expecting someone to tell you how things work.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of information out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of really reputable sources.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is your job to go to research, to really put in the time and effort, because that's just going to be the tip of the iceberg, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when you go into the informational interview, you'll be prepared with really good questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: Questions where you were already like thought about things and digested them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you have more specific questions, I guess.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's really important to I
[SPEAKER_01]: I just think that it's something that if you're meant to do it, if you're built for it, it's perfect.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's perfect.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to make you the happiest person ever.
[SPEAKER_01]: You'll never want to stop.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's an allure to being an agent where people think, oh, you have power.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's this perception that we have all this power.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you get to read all day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Doesn't that sound like a great job?
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you don't talk to the men during all of those things.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're right.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're like if you, if you don't know the mechanics of the job, because when we do, you, I'm sure you've heard this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I remember you did this incubator thing many years ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: Remember with people who wanted to be agents, and I remember at the end, there were people who were like, I don't want to do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you were like, good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not good isn't, that's what you wanted.
[SPEAKER_01]: What you wanted was for them to know whether they wanted or not.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they realized they didn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's okay too.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, there's just a lot of people that don't actually understand what this job is, and because there's a certain level of secrecy around it, because of client confidentiality often is most of the reason people don't actually understand what we do on a day-to-day basis, and I agree the better prepared you are with better questions, the more interested I am and helping you, because you've come with better questions, and it's more intellectually stimulating to me to go deep on some of these things that I, you know, grapple with and deal with on a daily basis.
[SPEAKER_02]: Absolutely, and I also feel like you can't actually want to do this job until you get a glimpse into what this job is, and so that's why I love doing that kind of mentorship incubator session, which I had I was a 10 week program and I had different agents kind of coming in in different weeks doing panels and talking about what it was to these mentees.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it was great.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: Tons of them were like, I do not want to do this at all.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's a very hard job with a lot of hard skills and a lot of soft skills that often don't align in a lot of people in the same way.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you need that one thing, you know, when you didn't use you obviously kind of got to this point, but you didn't use the word entrepreneurial and it's incredibly entrepreneurial.
[SPEAKER_02]: like, are you willing to risk it all for this job?
[SPEAKER_02]: And some people are just not built to risk it all where some of us decided that they were going to risk it all and we're lucky enough to have it paid off and and all of the best ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and sometimes it doesn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we have colleagues who started out with us and we started out on different moments who stopped.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, you'd have to talk to them to know whether it was worth it or not, but it's a risking job.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a job with a lot of risk, a lot of risks.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of rewards too.
[SPEAKER_01]: The rewards are also, I will say that.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, well, we'll put a pin in that conversation for now, but again, another one we could go on and on about if anybody has a specific question.
[SPEAKER_02]: Good questions.
[SPEAKER_02]: Good interesting questions about our day.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let us now.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, the next thing was something we got sent a ton of.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, CC, do you want to summarize this for us?
[SPEAKER_02]: There was a very prominent Kickstarter that happened recently.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you want to give us the rundown?
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, so Ali Hazelwood and Adriana Hedeta, they started a Kickstarter for a new collection of theirs and it was wildly successful.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am looking at the numbers here because I pulled them with you funded it under four minutes and had almost 700,000 in the first 24 hours.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think their goal was like,
[SPEAKER_01]: know, 10,000?
[SPEAKER_01]: What was their goal?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was way, way, way, way, way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, surpassed a goal of 10,000 to go comfortably over one million.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, it's not just that they went over one million.
[SPEAKER_01]: They got 700,000 in the first 24 hours.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, essentially these are authors who went directly to their creators and said, hey, do you guys want to find this?
[SPEAKER_01]: This thing we're doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think it's amazing that we live in a world that's possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's one of the many wonderful things about technology.
[SPEAKER_01]: I also think it's so interesting because what it says, like to me, it says that people are really hungry to use the power of their dollars and to put that towards people.
[SPEAKER_01]: I see a parallel with Taylor Swift, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the reason why she's such a powerhouse has to do with the fact that her fans love her.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know,
[SPEAKER_01]: And when they're purchasing tickets to her concerts, they're investing in her and in the person, not in the broken potentially predatory system.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's really cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I think it's fascinated.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a venture powered by readers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Isn't that amazing?
[SPEAKER_02]: Now I think I think it's great.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think one of the things that was really interesting to me and really solidified something for me was The kind of campaign that they went on so it's not just like hey out of nowhere They just kind of post this Kickstarter there was years obviously of nurturing their newsletter list nurturing their social media audience So they again felt like they got to this point where they could again have this bond in this community
[SPEAKER_02]: that's obviously super important.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then they kind of created a campaign around it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So and we'll post a link to this article, but Kickstarter did like an update blog post essentially and asked them about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then Ali says a huge part of it was the social media newsletter worked done in the months before, months plural.
[SPEAKER_02]: Everyone in the anthology made sure that the readership was aware that the project would happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: So everybody in the anthology was then communicating this to all of their fans and in turn those readerships helped us read the
[SPEAKER_02]: We made sure we had branding that was distinct and recognizable.
[SPEAKER_02]: We planned content months ahead of time.
[SPEAKER_02]: We made sure to include our contributing authors and all the key decisions without requiring them to have you lifting and getting the word out of the project.
[SPEAKER_02]: We also made sure to provide them with assets and resources for them to share with their readers and on their own platforms.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, to me, this, again, speaks to also the author as the driving creative force of all of this, because a lot of times, there can be this like victim mentality of publishing, of like, I'm just an author within this system, but the author as the talent, the author as the content creator, as the visionary, as the one who's driving this, is, and I can imagine, a lot of people in publishing could potentially be unsettled by this, because then it's, it begs the question, what is the role of the publisher?
[SPEAKER_02]: If the powerhouse author can then,
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, build this relationship directly with their audience.
[SPEAKER_02]: Create this incredible campaign, built on the back of obviously.
[SPEAKER_02]: their relationships, what they've learned through the book publishing process and pre-order campaigns that they probably utilize for their books.
[SPEAKER_02]: And really, it's just digital sales, techniques, right, and email sales funnels and things like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's nothing necessarily like new, but the way that they employ it in a way that is so revolutionary is because it then creates them as the business women, as the CEOs of this new venture that they get to then determine where
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, like you said, the fans feel like they are directly invested in this now.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I can, yeah, I can, I can see this doing really well, continuing to get more publicity.
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, like not only did this great publicity within the Kickstarter universe, it created publicity within the publishing universe.
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's just so many things that are going to kind of spin off from this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And hopefully inspire lots of other authors too, too, to really think about other ways to kind of monetize the relationship with our audience, not just for the sake of monetizing it.
[SPEAKER_02]: to know that there potentially are other ways.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you feel like maybe you've got to a roadblock because it doesn't say whether they try to sell this to a publisher.
[SPEAKER_02]: But potentially whether they got a roadblock somewhere, I'm not saying they did or didn't, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, oh, now here's another avenue where Kickstarter can support and provide themselves as a platform for us to reach our readers and build this kind of financial system.
[SPEAKER_02]: So anyway, I could go on and on.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's very interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is, and I love that it happened to romance authors.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so much judgment and shade that is thrown in the direction of romance authors.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, romance is not a serious genre.
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, go eat a cookie and go read a romance novel.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I just, I don't know, I thought it was really cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Really cool to see this happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: It, it lights me up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: Next article.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I saw this on first I saw this on Instagram and I shared it in my stories and tons of you commented on it and you guys might remember it was a real from Lauren Martin.
[SPEAKER_02]: She does the words of women Instagram handle and it was this real about kind of the relationship that she felt between power and money and publishing.
[SPEAKER_02]: and her goals and her cravings of what she wanted in terms of how success looked to her.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, I was blown away by this real.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was about the Porsche if you guys remember this, but her wanting a Porsche.
[SPEAKER_02]: I posted this real and then it was actually a longer kind of newsletter blog post.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I sent that over to CC for her to read as well and I have so many favorite quotes from it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, tons of tons of my followers saw me posted about this because I was really taken by it and it really punched me in the gut, which you think, CC.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to know if you want to push.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I do.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's see, and it's something about there's something about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe I'm just like the target audience for this, but it does.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is the confluence of like power and what women are supposed to want and creativity and obviously the design.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyway, we can go on and on.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, but I'm going to I'm going to backtrack just so everybody can find this article if they want to find it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So Lauren Martin.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the author.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's the author of Book of Moods and she has a new memoir coming out.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you want to find the blog post, it's words of women.com slash delusions of grandeur.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I want to make sure we give a people a shout out.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they don't where to find it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I could go on and on.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was totally taken with this and one of the things I really liked was and she mentioned this in the Instagram reel and I'll just kind of quote it from the blog post.
[SPEAKER_02]: But she says, I had to do something while I waited for the publishers to decide my fate.
[SPEAKER_02]: If the more I researched the clear of my fears and my husband who had become, because she was told that, you know, portions aren't for women, essentially.
[SPEAKER_02]: And goals and striving in these symbols of power aren't for women.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she says, because of the price, owning a porcelain, you were in the one percent, because one percent of people own a porcelain.
[SPEAKER_02]: and the statistical chances of an author getting a book deal with a top five publisher is also approximately one to two percent.
[SPEAKER_02]: She said, maybe I'd never be Virginia for a Porsche, but I had been in the one percent, I even published my big five publisher, and I had written my way there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And in the post she kind of, you know, conflates these two things together in a way that I think is really powerful, which is, you know,
[SPEAKER_02]: Getting published, you are in the one to two percent of people that actually get a big five book deal.
[SPEAKER_02]: Isn't that incredible?
[SPEAKER_02]: And yet as a woman still wanting, quote unquote, more or a symbol to represent with that more means, I just, I absolutely loved it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, she didn't just, she, I mean, I guess she didn't just dream.
[SPEAKER_01]: She dared, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's really cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love that, I mean, as someone who is zero interest in any car, like any car, I think cars are so boring,
[SPEAKER_01]: I still got it though, like it still starts to me because it's about not being sensible.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's about not one of the things that are sensible or practical or like a sign, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what are you supposed to do with your advance while you're supposed to do with money?
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It comes back to the psychology of money, I guess.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that she was like sensible.
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's children.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like a two-seater Porsche is not sensible.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, that's great.
[SPEAKER_01]: That comes back to great.
[SPEAKER_02]: like women aren't quote unquote allowed to be nonsense.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: If we have children, we have jobs, we have responsibilities.
[SPEAKER_02]: We should save.
[SPEAKER_02]: It would be so silly to do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: And spend your money on XYZ and yet she still chose to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And whether it's, you know, the vacation or I don't know the house right now or
[SPEAKER_02]: a shopping spree or the port.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like whatever the thing is, I just love whatever your Porsche is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whatever your Porsche is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, exactly.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like there's a thing and there's a symbol that is so non-sensical and I feel like especially as more women approach their power and approach being wealthier, you know, in terms of more women becoming more wealthier as time goes on and all of the all of the wonderful stuff that that brings.
[SPEAKER_02]: The idea that women are allowed to be nonsensical with their money, not only is it crazy that we talk about money more than ever, we've been talking about money more than ever, but also that yeah they can dream something silly with their money like to me that is just the epitome of feminism and money and power like being able to be silly with your money right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I silly for you, not silly for your children or for your whatever, yeah, but but but also he can be silly and you can reclaim that, you know, of course there's depth in the silliness, but it can also just be fine, you know, that's kind of awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's revolutionary.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's so uncomfortable for people.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is, it's defiant.
[SPEAKER_02]: absolutely so anyway I loved it and so if you guys saw the real I hope you did also check out the longer kind of newsletter blog post that it was inspired by and I want to check out her new memoir I haven't read either of her books but she has a new memoir coming out with yeah I'm also really excited to check out well this conversation is super fun but we have to take a break now for a word from our sponsors
[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back everybody.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have a few things I want to highlight coming up in our next newsletter, the podcast newsletter.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we have a great character inspiration worksheet put together by James good hand author of reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated following on from his awesome insights and Fridays edition about how writing while working full time is actually a good thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: James Ridesman exercises to help assemble a fascinating cast by harvesting elements of those unique people around us.
[SPEAKER_02]: We also have an awesome video by Sean Dietrich, author of Over Yonder, where he gives invaluable advice on navigating that much dreaded seaward critique.
[SPEAKER_02]: And how to embrace self-doubt as part of your journey.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you've been struggling with weather or not to let go of a book that keeps getting rejected, you don't want to miss out on a brilliant essay from Jennifer Fossett, author of Keep This For Me, who campaigns to not give up on your passion project.
[SPEAKER_02]: And last week was books with us.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So all of this is in the Tuesday newsletter edition to become a paid subscriber.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And thank you for subscribing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you to everyone who subscribes.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are so thankful and we love you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we do love you all.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, let's move on to our next article, CC, which one are we going to focus on?
[SPEAKER_01]: This was the one that was most shared at least in my opinion.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I got so many DMs about this one.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like I did, I am going to be brutally honest here because I have thoughts not just on the articles, but on the DMs I got.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is a piece from the walrus.
[SPEAKER_01]: If anyone is not familiar with the walrus, it is a wonderful magazine.
[SPEAKER_01]: I read it for fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's beautiful, great writing, it's awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: The publishing industry has a gambling problem companies keep betting on the next best seller literature is poor for it We will link to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was published fairly recently a couple days ago a few days ago said 10 or 26 I don't know how your DMs Like what people said to you, but to me There were two buckets.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was people who were saying it's easy.
[SPEAKER_01]: This article shares everything you guys always talk about
[SPEAKER_01]: Just like, yeah, this is like a summary of everything guys always talk about.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there were people who were like, oh my god, CC, I read this article and I'm shocked.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you talk about it on a shoot this shit?
[SPEAKER_01]: And to the people in the second bucket, I want to ask you, where have you been?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you know listen to our show?
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Just a minute, you don't listen to our show.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a myth that you fast forward through half of our show.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, it's every time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Seriously, because there's nothing surprising about this article.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is very well written.
[SPEAKER_01]: I disagree with a lot of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: It says, I agree with a whole bunch of things.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's great, as it should be when I read an article, not supposed to be with everything, but it is not surprising.
[SPEAKER_01]: Publishing is institutionalized gambling.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is what publishing is.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you sell a book,
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You are selling something that made you feel a certain way and that your gut tells you could reach readers.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the data that goes into choosing Comps, which is what goes into P and Nells.
[SPEAKER_01]: For debuts anyway, and sure if you already have a bulk, there's a track record, et cetera, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you sell a house, do you know what you use for comps?
[SPEAKER_01]: Other houses in the neighborhood.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hard data, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whenever the renovation happened, it is not how a book works.
[SPEAKER_01]: A book is totally based on taste, subjectivity, and emotion.
[SPEAKER_01]: We talk about this every week.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why are you surprised?
[SPEAKER_01]: With love, asking with love.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is anyone surprised?
[SPEAKER_01]: Publishing doesn't have a gambling problem?
[SPEAKER_01]: It is gambling.
[SPEAKER_01]: but it is gambling.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is what this industry is get over it, get over it, get comfortable with it, accept it and move on because I am not saying we shouldn't talk about the gambling aspects of publishing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm saying no one's allowed to be surprised and say they listen to the show.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't do both.
[SPEAKER_02]: I agree.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do think that this is nothing revolutionary.
[SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate everybody sending us the DMs because of course We want to cover topical things on the shows and if you're kind of off their group chats are going off about this That is something that I want to know about.
[SPEAKER_02]: I agree.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess I'm surprised at how many people are surprised or they just love when publishing industries being reflected in mainstream media In a kind of publication such as the walrus, you know, who writes about publishing from time to time and they do great work and so
[SPEAKER_02]: I love that we are going down these paths, but I mean, and maybe I was attempting to try to learn something new.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't learn anything new doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with this article because I'm clearly not the target audience for this article at all because I am one of the institutionalized gamblers who works in this business who has gambled my entire career again as we started off this program talking about I've gambled my entire gambler than one gambled in one.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know I get to be you know the one percent of the agents right which is which is awesome and so I'm so
[SPEAKER_02]: grateful for this system.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is, of course, it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're taking chances on things.
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, doesn't mean that there's not kind of like heart and emotionality to it, but it is a business.
[SPEAKER_01]: There absolutely is.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: But gambling has nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: The gambling doesn't mean that can't be heart and emotionality and mission and passion.
[SPEAKER_01]: These things are not mutually exclusive.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the article covers the pressure to succeed from the beginning, obsession with finding an expeceler, the track record being like credit, it covers the fact that most books are losses for publishers, that the advance is not seen as a rate, but rather as funding, it covers the consequences of corporate consolidation, of a rapidly slimming media, and other factors
[SPEAKER_01]: either break out and they'll continue investing in it or they just stop investing in authors and that's a shame.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now of course it's a shame 100% ashamed and I agree with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not the target audience for this at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: If someone doesn't know about publishing I think it's a really interesting article but for everyone who's our listener you guys should know about publishing because we talk about it all the time and so I just again it's it is a really awesome article if you haven't read it but I actually think this is a test test to see how knowledge will you are
[SPEAKER_01]: If you read it and you go, yep, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha
[SPEAKER_02]: about so many things, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what does it mean to be kind of mid-career and in the mid-list and, you know, what would it take to kind of overcome?
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a lot I think that people can learn.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am not the target audience for it, but creating products under capitalism, especially in late-stage capitalism.
[SPEAKER_02]: We just can't pretend that these things don't exist or exist within a vacuum because they exist within the larger structures of
[SPEAKER_02]: the market, our multi-billion dollar market, like I always like to say, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's, I think there's always this certain amount of like, open optimism and publishing that because we are such a legacy media industry that we've stood the test of time, you know, we've made it through every form of the industrial age and technology and, you know, it's e-commerce, e-books, AI, like I think we are
[SPEAKER_02]: through these times of turbulence are opportunities for reflection, but it doesn't mean that it's going to change the fact that we are selling products under capitalism.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we all exist within this system.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it doesn't mean we're endorsing it either, like I will tell you if I could change a whole bunch of things about publishing, I would.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't endorse a lot of it, most of it, probably.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's still reality and it's really important to live within reality,
[SPEAKER_01]: if you want to make it in this industry and I know people listening to us if you're right or anyway you do then yeah yeah embrace the fact that it's gambling embrace the fact that it's gambling because
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no way, there's no way over it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that a lot of authors also just can't make sense of publishing, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because they're like, well, why does this author get this much money?
[SPEAKER_02]: And this author gets this much money when there's because they're like writing a novel.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, these people are both writing a novel about XYZ, they're both at whatever stage in their career.
[SPEAKER_02]: why are these P&Ls different, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like how do we get to the end number?
[SPEAKER_02]: So there's that element of like how we come up with these P&L not we isn't the publishers come up with the P&Ls we push back on these P&Ls and always say
[SPEAKER_02]: There's where I'm going to improve here, but then we get to the point of like the book comes out in the world and then the readers get to decide also like there's just so many levels of this of where things can kind of like accelerate and decelerate for others various careers at any given time and so much of it is out of their control and I think we're always trying to like put this kind of control system over top of publishing try to like remote control and like.
[SPEAKER_02]: If it just did this and then I could predict what was going to happen, we can't predict what's going to happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: Never predict what's going to happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what keeps this job in industry really exciting and fun because we don't know what the next thing is going to be.
[SPEAKER_02]: And obviously, we have trained our brains to work with a new system to learn more about it and try to come up with, you know, with these ideas with our authors and sell them to publishers, but we cannot control this industry no matter how much we try.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the thing that I find most frustrating
[SPEAKER_02]: Engineers book deals or auctions and and the way that we want to put so much control on the system that we can never control where always And some ways moving by the seat of our pants because every book is different every author is different every scenarios different Every moment in time different exact.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we can not control this industry
[SPEAKER_01]: It's magic and madness.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's both.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can opt out if you don't want to, please don't, because we need writers, but again, you can.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or you can embrace it and frankly surrender, publishing requires surrender, surrendering of this this urge to control, which I empathize with.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love control, but you know, guys surrender.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is what it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: Alrighty, well I agree everybody should go check out that article.
[SPEAKER_02]: We will link to all of these articles in our show notes you guys have access to them
[SPEAKER_02]: The last thing I just wanted to draw attention to, I'll also link this in the show notes, was Penguin Random House has an author newsletter.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm pretty sure this is just a blog on their website, but they have an article all about what happens with the In-house publicity team on any given day.
[SPEAKER_02]: It goes through like a day in their life and has a little Q&A with some in-house publicists, which based on today's conversation could be interesting to everybody, so make sure you check that out as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, I thought it was really cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for sharing that.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, well, that's it from us today.
[SPEAKER_02]: CCI hope you have a great week at work and we will recap.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK.
[SPEAKER_00]: CCLera is a literary agent at Wendy Sherman Associates.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you'd like to query CC, please refer to the submission guidelines at www.wshomen.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: But a work on this podcast is not affiliated with the agency and the views expressed by Colley on this podcast are solely that of her as a podcast co-host.
[SPEAKER_00]: They do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of PS literary agency.