WEBVTT 00:01.930 --> 00:07.955 [SPEAKER_03]: Welcome to another episode of Shooting the Shit with Literary Agents, Carly Waters, and CC Lyra. 00:08.456 --> 00:13.800 [SPEAKER_03]: Where we dissect publishing gossip, discuss book industry trends, and the overall state of the book business. 00:14.201 --> 00:18.705 [SPEAKER_03]: If you'd ever wanted to grab a coffee with two literary agents, grab your mug, and pull up a chair. 00:26.109 --> 00:37.253 [SPEAKER_03]: Hi everybody, welcome to another shooting the shit episode with me and CC welcome to hanging out with us hearing everything that's going on behind the scenes what's going on on our agent brains. 00:37.753 --> 00:40.134 [SPEAKER_03]: We have a huge list of things to talk about today. 00:40.314 --> 00:43.255 [SPEAKER_03]: I have pulled together some links and CC and I have 00:43.575 --> 00:44.156 [SPEAKER_03]: Sure, it's some notes. 00:44.176 --> 00:48.399 [SPEAKER_03]: We kind of got a Google Doc system going where we're sharing what we want to talk about in these episodes. 00:48.439 --> 00:53.303 [SPEAKER_03]: So we have everything from AI to what summers and publishing really look like. 00:53.423 --> 01:02.751 [SPEAKER_03]: I want to talk about hustle culture in the year of twenty twenty five and what it means to kind of, I don't know, like the entrepreneurial in this day and age of the soft life. 01:03.332 --> 01:05.313 [SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, we have some other articles we want to talk about too. 01:05.373 --> 01:07.095 [SPEAKER_03]: But first of all, how's your week been, ZEC? 01:07.575 --> 01:09.297 [SPEAKER_03]: It's been busy and good. 01:09.337 --> 01:09.897 [SPEAKER_03]: How about yours? 01:11.038 --> 01:12.139 [SPEAKER_03]: It's been okay. 01:12.199 --> 01:15.702 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm recording this right after the Canadian long weekend. 01:15.722 --> 01:16.863 [SPEAKER_03]: So it feels like a short one. 01:17.083 --> 01:25.871 [SPEAKER_03]: Lots to get done, but also when this kind of feeds into some of our summer and publishing a conversation, which is it's kind of good when it's a little bit quiet, we can catch up on things. 01:25.911 --> 01:30.795 [SPEAKER_03]: So I'm not mad about everybody in publishing, taking their holidays and enjoying themselves. 01:30.875 --> 01:34.998 [SPEAKER_03]: And I love when everybody's putting in their out of offices, like everybody deserves this time off. 01:35.038 --> 01:38.021 [SPEAKER_01]: So have you been getting a lot of out of offices? 01:38.061 --> 01:38.782 [SPEAKER_01]: I've been getting a few. 01:39.474 --> 01:39.774 [SPEAKER_03]: Yes. 01:39.834 --> 01:44.017 [SPEAKER_03]: It kind of depends on the week, but there's always somebody that's away in some capacity. 01:44.137 --> 01:45.077 [SPEAKER_03]: So it hasn't been too bad. 01:45.097 --> 01:45.718 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. 01:45.898 --> 01:46.238 [SPEAKER_03]: All right. 01:46.258 --> 01:47.479 [SPEAKER_03]: Where do you want to start, Susie? 01:47.539 --> 01:51.041 [SPEAKER_03]: What's on your mind of all the links and topics we have to cover today? 01:51.721 --> 01:55.764 [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I know that we should wrap up the whole dark rom-com thing. 01:56.044 --> 01:57.585 [SPEAKER_01]: I will be honest with our listeners. 01:57.705 --> 01:59.046 [SPEAKER_01]: I did not read lights out. 01:59.166 --> 02:00.046 [SPEAKER_01]: I did not have time. 02:00.206 --> 02:01.287 [SPEAKER_01]: I had too much to do. 02:01.887 --> 02:02.728 [SPEAKER_01]: Still planning on it. 02:02.988 --> 02:07.791 [SPEAKER_01]: But I'm excited as a future reader for Carly to tell us what she thought about it. 02:08.948 --> 02:10.050 [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, okay, I am. 02:10.310 --> 02:14.276 [SPEAKER_03]: We have to continue this because once you have read it, I definitely want to know what you thought about it. 02:14.817 --> 02:16.840 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I liked lights out a lot. 02:17.200 --> 02:20.345 [SPEAKER_03]: I would say personally prefer it to butcher the blackbird. 02:20.365 --> 02:24.732 [SPEAKER_03]: I can never remember if it's butcher blackbird or blackbird and butcher, so whoever is listening to this can correct me. 02:25.192 --> 02:25.852 [SPEAKER_03]: I liked it a lot. 02:25.993 --> 02:28.414 [SPEAKER_03]: I think it was much more psychological. 02:29.034 --> 02:30.515 [SPEAKER_03]: So I liked that a lot about it. 02:30.695 --> 02:43.843 [SPEAKER_03]: And I thought which was really interesting about this one in particular, which it ended up being a lot more about kind of like the human animal instincts, which I thought really interesting in a way where as we were getting to the end and the author kind of, you know, 02:44.223 --> 02:45.363 [SPEAKER_03]: tease this out a bit more. 02:45.723 --> 02:53.066 [SPEAKER_03]: But I kind of have written some notes down about it really harkened back to this animal instincts in an age where AI is kind of trying to wipe this out. 02:53.386 --> 03:06.030 [SPEAKER_03]: Like one of the reasons I think people might be so drawn to it is that it is again, like there's a scene of them like running through the woods together and they're soaking wet and this winter night trying to get away from the what are the crimes that they're involved with. 03:06.090 --> 03:10.551 [SPEAKER_03]: And so this like deep connection to nature to animal instincts. 03:10.931 --> 03:13.732 [SPEAKER_03]: I think makes a lot of sense in this day and age, you know, that anyway. 03:14.032 --> 03:15.713 [SPEAKER_03]: We'll talk about it more once you've read it. 03:15.733 --> 03:20.014 [SPEAKER_03]: I don't want to spoil it for you, but I thought that the stakes were a lot more realistic. 03:20.374 --> 03:22.275 [SPEAKER_03]: And I just, I like the psychological elements. 03:22.335 --> 03:24.796 [SPEAKER_03]: So we'll put a pin in that until the CC's read that one. 03:25.676 --> 03:26.436 [SPEAKER_01]: I hope I love it. 03:26.456 --> 03:31.038 [SPEAKER_01]: I definitely love the idea of psychological elements in something dark and at the same time witty. 03:31.078 --> 03:32.159 [SPEAKER_01]: So that sounds exciting. 03:32.559 --> 03:38.601 [SPEAKER_01]: One of the things that brings me the most joy in life is when I lose myself in a book and I binge read 03:39.567 --> 03:41.568 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, usually most books I do not binge read. 03:41.748 --> 04:02.238 [SPEAKER_01]: Usually most books I would read a little bit every day because there's just not enough time to binge read a book, but some stories, they just suck me in and I forget about where I am, what I'm doing, what's on my to-do list, what's for dinner, like I just forget about real life and I start living this parallel life and I become someone else and that's really special and the last book that did that for me. 04:02.459 --> 04:04.740 [SPEAKER_01]: I should actually correct myself the last 04:05.600 --> 04:29.801 [SPEAKER_01]: non-client book that did that for me was the compound I just loved that book so much like it's such a it's fascinating novel the premise is it's an obviously she was interviewed on our show so that's really awesome and the premise is essentially love island but in a dystopian near future and so the challenges are you know they get to be star they don't give them water like it's actually like the stakes are so much higher and 04:31.558 --> 04:33.779 [SPEAKER_01]: It was just incredibly interesting. 04:34.119 --> 04:40.582 [SPEAKER_01]: And it broke a lot of storytelling rules as well, which was fascinating to me, like how the author managed to pull that off. 04:40.882 --> 04:42.902 [SPEAKER_01]: I will go on the record and say that I do not believe that. 04:43.002 --> 04:44.243 [SPEAKER_01]: She wrote it in six weeks. 04:44.323 --> 04:51.546 [SPEAKER_01]: Apparently she said that on our show, I didn't actually listen to the interview, but multiple people DMed me to say, see, see, the author wrote this in six weeks. 04:51.706 --> 04:52.486 [SPEAKER_01]: I do not believe that. 04:52.606 --> 04:54.587 [SPEAKER_01]: For a second, I am sorry that it's simply not true. 04:54.847 --> 05:14.157 [SPEAKER_01]: author if you want to DM me go for it I do not believe that no one can write something that amazing in six weeks and I just no I don't accept that but it was so good and so bingy and so addictive like I just loved it do you have that do you have like books that you read and you like binge and you can't do anything but read the book like obsessive books 05:15.276 --> 05:16.196 [SPEAKER_03]: Yes, no. 05:16.517 --> 05:21.399 [SPEAKER_03]: I would say my tendency is to just binge things in general. 05:21.479 --> 05:25.301 [SPEAKER_03]: So if I am liking something, I just, I've said it before. 05:25.341 --> 05:26.421 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm an all or nothing person. 05:26.461 --> 05:28.562 [SPEAKER_03]: Like once I'm in, I'm in the whole way. 05:28.582 --> 05:32.044 [SPEAKER_03]: I think it's also because when I have limited time, I'm like, okay, I gotta do this. 05:32.124 --> 05:33.965 [SPEAKER_03]: Like, I know, we'll talk about books in a second. 05:34.045 --> 05:39.247 [SPEAKER_03]: But in terms of TV shows, like once I watched one episode of the pit, I had to watch the entire thing. 05:39.287 --> 05:42.849 [SPEAKER_03]: Like I was up till three in the morning, just like literally watched it the entire time. 05:43.349 --> 05:47.715 [SPEAKER_03]: I was in Pittsburgh because I wanted to get the pit in Pittsburgh experience which was which was great. 05:47.775 --> 05:55.005 [SPEAKER_03]: So I am an other nothing person like I try and I said this before on our books with hook segment of the show like with client books. 05:55.265 --> 06:00.773 [SPEAKER_03]: I want to sit down and read at the beginning and I do not want to be interrupted because I find that if I am enjoying something and obviously 06:01.133 --> 06:18.130 [SPEAKER_03]: enjoy all my clients that I really want to be immersed in the experience so that I can I can be with it beginning middle and then so that I can reflect on it in a more holistic way so when I'm liking anything I'm binging at basically is the long answer I guess the short answer in terms of what I binge where I felt like 06:18.730 --> 06:22.214 [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I said like quote unquote the last book that ruined my life, essentially. 06:22.234 --> 06:34.165 [SPEAKER_03]: I honestly think it has been some of the romanticy series because the world and the characters kind of come together in a way where when you put it down like really felt like I missed that and so 06:35.086 --> 06:44.391 [SPEAKER_03]: I would maybe say, I'm just trying to think if it would be, I would say probably the second fourth wing book because I read them back to back when they both come out. 06:44.431 --> 06:47.893 [SPEAKER_03]: So it wasn't like I read the fourth wing book and then head away for the next one, the next one. 06:48.213 --> 06:54.917 [SPEAKER_03]: So I read the first two back to back and I really felt like really sad that I had to put them down and not be in that world anymore. 06:55.377 --> 06:58.079 [SPEAKER_03]: And it took me a while to I just read on extorm this summer. 06:58.119 --> 06:59.339 [SPEAKER_03]: I know it's very behind on that. 06:59.739 --> 07:00.460 [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, I don't know. 07:00.480 --> 07:03.722 [SPEAKER_03]: There's certain things where I think if there is especially a world, 07:04.782 --> 07:06.183 [SPEAKER_03]: that I get to be in. 07:06.263 --> 07:07.704 [SPEAKER_03]: That's when I feel like I miss it. 07:07.744 --> 07:12.026 [SPEAKER_03]: So I don't feel like in terms of books that ruin my life, it's always contemporary. 07:12.066 --> 07:25.073 [SPEAKER_03]: Now, well, sometimes it is like a historical, for example, you know, Kristen Hannah, always is this incredible job in her historical, is a feeling like we were there in that moment, you know, like four wins or whatever it is, where we're just, we feel like we're so there. 07:25.093 --> 07:29.675 [SPEAKER_03]: And then when you put it down, you look up and you're like, oh, it's actually not, I'm not in the dust bowl. 07:29.815 --> 07:30.936 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm not in a blizzard right now. 07:30.956 --> 07:33.537 [SPEAKER_03]: We're like, you know, whatever the weather is with the environment. 07:33.957 --> 07:38.460 [SPEAKER_03]: Those are the books where I feel like that ruined my life because, you know, nothing will compare. 07:38.700 --> 07:45.124 [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, I would say, for fantasy and historical, does that the most for me, but I will honestly, I binge everything. 07:45.144 --> 07:46.204 [SPEAKER_03]: Like I read a submission. 07:46.224 --> 07:47.905 [SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of a submission. 07:47.925 --> 07:50.207 [SPEAKER_03]: Again, I'll talk vaguely about my agent stuff. 07:50.227 --> 07:54.429 [SPEAKER_03]: So I had somebody submit to me who was a published author basically looking for representation. 07:54.449 --> 07:56.811 [SPEAKER_03]: And so I put it on my Kindle. 07:56.991 --> 07:57.651 [SPEAKER_03]: And I was loving it. 07:57.711 --> 07:58.572 [SPEAKER_03]: I read it all night. 07:58.672 --> 08:00.593 [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I'm a pretty fast reader as well. 08:01.033 --> 08:04.414 [SPEAKER_03]: So once I'm reading something, I can kind of power through it because I'm pretty fast. 08:04.534 --> 08:07.935 [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, basically anything I'm enjoying is a bit read for me. 08:08.555 --> 08:12.857 [SPEAKER_01]: The fascinating thing about our jobs, I think is literary agents is that. 08:14.577 --> 08:24.800 [SPEAKER_01]: So the best way to explain literary agenting to someone who's not in publishing does not want to write a book is to be like, oh, like a real estate agent, but for books and not houses, right? 08:25.360 --> 08:26.841 [SPEAKER_01]: But, and this is where it gets tricky. 08:27.964 --> 08:36.014 [SPEAKER_01]: If you want to know what a house is worth, if you want to know what a house will sell for, you look at the comps that sold around that house. 08:36.434 --> 08:37.876 [SPEAKER_01]: These are objective metrics. 08:38.396 --> 08:43.643 [SPEAKER_01]: You look at things like, when was it recently renovated, you know, what the plumbing situation is, how many bedrooms? 08:44.203 --> 08:47.866 [SPEAKER_01]: whether the cabinetry is whatever, like this is just so objective. 08:47.886 --> 08:53.091 [SPEAKER_01]: But for the agent, of course, sometimes homeowners have like, you know, subjective feelings towards their homes. 08:53.171 --> 08:58.916 [SPEAKER_01]: But these are the metrics that go into making a decision of, you know, is this home-soluble for what, et cetera? 08:59.596 --> 09:01.278 [SPEAKER_01]: That's why it's called real estate. 09:01.358 --> 09:01.698 [SPEAKER_01]: It's real. 09:02.058 --> 09:04.040 [SPEAKER_01]: Now, what we do is we sell intellectual property. 09:04.661 --> 09:04.801 [SPEAKER_01]: And 09:05.595 --> 09:08.659 [SPEAKER_01]: The metrics of can I sell this and for what? 09:09.359 --> 09:10.380 [SPEAKER_01]: That's all emotion. 09:10.601 --> 09:13.884 [SPEAKER_01]: And the number one emotion I track when I'm reading something. 09:14.923 --> 09:16.223 [SPEAKER_01]: is do I want to go back to it? 09:16.623 --> 09:27.806 [SPEAKER_01]: So if I start reading a submission and then there's this poll, this deep, deep psychological poll that's almost like a new gravitational field that makes me go, you have to go back to that book. 09:27.866 --> 09:30.287 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm writing an email, but my mind is going, you have to go back to the book. 09:30.607 --> 09:33.647 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm talking to someone on the phone, but my mind is going, go back to that book. 09:34.448 --> 09:37.548 [SPEAKER_01]: That poll is a huge metric. 09:38.048 --> 09:42.329 [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's interesting to me that you read in one sitting because then how do you know if you have the poll? 09:42.349 --> 09:44.350 [SPEAKER_01]: Do you just know because you want to keep reading? 09:45.050 --> 09:45.731 [SPEAKER_03]: That is the poll. 09:45.971 --> 09:52.956 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's like I don't need to do anything else because I am very aware I'm somebody that needs a certain amount of sleep. 09:53.076 --> 09:55.998 [SPEAKER_03]: Let's just say I'm very cranky when I don't get my sleep. 09:56.278 --> 09:59.861 [SPEAKER_03]: So if I'm willing to be like, okay, I'll push it a couple extra outwards going. 09:59.901 --> 10:00.441 [SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna catch it. 10:01.800 --> 10:19.679 [SPEAKER_03]: that like that is the pull for me and I agree with you like that and a lot of editors will say that yeah if I want to come back to it then I know yes for me and so I know that's a common thing but for me it's yeah what am I willing to for go like what am I willing to block out in order to be in this world a little bit longer 10:20.342 --> 10:41.792 [SPEAKER_03]: do you always read at night or weekends because like if stuff isn't interrupting you if you then it must be right you must yeah I mean just because of you know my my general schedule in life so yeah I would say gosh ninety percent of the time I'm reading in the evening like I'll pick up a manuscript like my husband puts the kids to bed and I pick up a manuscript around seven I'll be done by midnight 10:42.532 --> 10:49.377 [SPEAKER_03]: Um, so I'll do a lot of, yeah, I'll do a lot of like block reading in the evening and weekends. 10:49.518 --> 10:57.944 [SPEAKER_03]: I can a little bit on the weekends, but it's a bit more piecemeal, but I can't just based on, you know, how many emails I have to reply to in these rooms. 10:58.004 --> 11:01.727 [SPEAKER_03]: I have, I can't set aside time in a weekday, essentially, to read. 11:01.747 --> 11:02.828 [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't want sitting. 11:03.288 --> 11:03.948 [SPEAKER_01]: That's for sure. 11:03.968 --> 11:04.609 [SPEAKER_01]: That's interesting. 11:04.649 --> 11:05.730 [SPEAKER_01]: No, that's really interesting. 11:06.030 --> 11:06.931 [SPEAKER_01]: Look into your process. 11:06.991 --> 11:07.831 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I like that. 11:08.872 --> 11:09.773 [SPEAKER_01]: That's a little bit about me. 11:09.893 --> 11:13.676 [SPEAKER_01]: Speaking of emails and zooms and hustle, do you want to talk about hustle culture? 11:14.857 --> 11:19.421 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, this has been on my mind and sometimes when I think like, oh, you know, is it an essay? 11:19.461 --> 11:20.141 [SPEAKER_03]: Is it a real? 11:20.222 --> 11:23.024 [SPEAKER_03]: Is it, you know, what, what is the way that I want to talk about something? 11:23.084 --> 11:30.710 [SPEAKER_03]: I'm like, okay, I think this is maybe something that CC and I should get into because I've been thinking a lot about this lately for a variety of reasons, but I've been thinking about 11:31.951 --> 11:48.799 [SPEAKER_03]: hustle culture and entrepreneurial spirit and I think about this in the context of often like how I mentor younger people or people ask me like oh you know how did you get to where you were or like what advice would you give to your younger self like those type of questions and it's really hard for me to kind of divorce 11:49.833 --> 11:55.257 [SPEAKER_03]: Like the era that I kind of came of age in from how I got to where I was. 11:55.397 --> 11:57.759 [SPEAKER_03]: And I know, and again, we're both kind of millennials. 11:57.799 --> 12:00.622 [SPEAKER_03]: Maybe we need a Gen Z to like pop in on this conversation. 12:00.682 --> 12:04.424 [SPEAKER_03]: But I think a lot about how to advise somebody who. 12:06.326 --> 12:10.108 [SPEAKER_03]: in a group of people who feel like, you know, they want more work life balance. 12:10.488 --> 12:14.430 [SPEAKER_03]: They like this quote, quote, like, soft life environment, hustle culture. 12:14.450 --> 12:18.432 [SPEAKER_03]: It makes people think about burning out and therefore people don't want to burn out. 12:18.732 --> 12:26.556 [SPEAKER_03]: And so how do you advise people to like get that fire under them, knowing that like I was somebody that worked a ton of hours. 12:26.596 --> 12:30.498 [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I worked seven days a week between a couple of jobs starting out. 12:30.718 --> 12:31.659 [SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, I don't know. 12:31.759 --> 12:32.899 [SPEAKER_03]: Does that make any sense at all? 12:32.999 --> 12:34.440 [SPEAKER_03]: Does the soft process I'm working through? 12:35.105 --> 12:48.075 [SPEAKER_01]: It does because I feel like you're trying to reconcile things that seem like contradictions because you want to give an honest answer and the way you found your success had to do with hustling. 12:48.095 --> 12:49.676 [SPEAKER_01]: You hustle to get to where you are. 12:49.716 --> 12:52.378 [SPEAKER_01]: There's no way to say that that's not true. 12:53.259 --> 12:59.283 [SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, you want to be honoring people's desire for the soft life. 12:59.383 --> 13:01.685 [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's, for sure, really interesting. 13:02.611 --> 13:08.817 [SPEAKER_01]: I get a lot of, I mean, I shouldn't say a lot, but you know, every once in a while someone will reach out and they'll say, hey, I'm thinking of becoming an agent. 13:08.877 --> 13:10.459 [SPEAKER_01]: This is especially common for lawyers. 13:10.819 --> 13:12.981 [SPEAKER_01]: Like this week, I had a lawyer call me. 13:13.242 --> 13:23.652 [SPEAKER_01]: So she did her, she worked in publishing before she went to law school, then went to law school, worked as a lawyer, and now is thinking about going back to publishing specifically to be an agent. 13:23.752 --> 13:26.075 [SPEAKER_01]: So when she worked in publishing, she worked in editorial. 13:26.831 --> 13:29.733 [SPEAKER_01]: And she's like, I just need to know like how you made it work, like what it was like. 13:30.834 --> 13:44.603 [SPEAKER_01]: And when you talk to someone who comes from a certain type of background and lawyers are one example of that, I don't really think that I spend too much time addressing the hustle, just because there's just no way someone made it into like law from culture without hustling. 13:44.623 --> 13:48.386 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, like that, you might not want to, but it's just like, it's like banking. 13:48.446 --> 13:50.828 [SPEAKER_01]: Certain industries, it's like, well, you, you hustle. 13:51.088 --> 13:51.828 [SPEAKER_01]: You might not call it. 13:52.028 --> 13:52.869 [SPEAKER_01]: You signed up for this. 13:53.289 --> 13:54.050 [SPEAKER_01]: This is really. 13:54.350 --> 13:54.710 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. 13:54.951 --> 14:01.255 [SPEAKER_01]: And with other industries, especially people who are going straight from the university and then they want to just go into publishing. 14:02.156 --> 14:04.618 [SPEAKER_01]: And their prefrontal cortex isn't even developed yet. 14:04.798 --> 14:08.341 [SPEAKER_01]: And so it's a very, very wonderful time to get into something you love. 14:08.361 --> 14:15.226 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm like Loki jealous of people who have only ever agented because I'm like, oh my god, you never had the before times. 14:15.646 --> 14:18.508 [SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, I'm like, do you know how good do you have it? 14:18.528 --> 14:21.050 [SPEAKER_01]: But when I talk to people like that, I 14:22.345 --> 14:33.235 [SPEAKER_01]: I just, I can't get around the fact that I don't know how you do this job without a certain level of obsession and hustle. 14:34.096 --> 14:36.318 [SPEAKER_01]: And hopefully there's a way to reconcile that. 14:36.378 --> 14:39.881 [SPEAKER_01]: Hopefully there's a way to not burnout and not like lose the spark. 14:39.981 --> 14:41.002 [SPEAKER_01]: That's for sure important. 14:41.903 --> 14:51.108 [SPEAKER_01]: But I just don't, I don't know how to make that work because it's so competitive and it requires so much planting of seeds. 14:51.168 --> 14:56.791 [SPEAKER_01]: Like your planting seeds and you will only see the fruits of those seeds years later, years. 14:57.011 --> 15:07.756 [SPEAKER_01]: And that kind of stamina, that kind of drive to be working so hard and not seeing any results and not really having any guarantees that you will see results for years. 15:08.937 --> 15:11.418 [SPEAKER_01]: That requires a certain kind of, I think, hustle. 15:11.659 --> 15:12.339 [SPEAKER_01]: I hope I'm wrong. 15:12.539 --> 15:14.100 [SPEAKER_01]: I hope people tell me, no, no, I've done it. 15:15.040 --> 15:25.967 [SPEAKER_01]: I actually think one thing that would be really interesting for us to talk about on the show would be talking to people who left agenting, you know, and then kind of like reporting back or something, just being like dispatches from people who left agenting, like, why? 15:26.307 --> 15:27.127 [SPEAKER_01]: Why are you happier? 15:27.187 --> 15:27.988 [SPEAKER_01]: What were your reasons? 15:28.088 --> 15:28.348 [SPEAKER_01]: Because 15:29.012 --> 15:30.895 [SPEAKER_01]: I can't imagine doing something else. 15:30.975 --> 15:31.676 [SPEAKER_01]: And I've thought about it. 15:31.716 --> 15:32.356 [SPEAKER_01]: I've considered it. 15:32.436 --> 15:34.719 [SPEAKER_01]: I've had moments in my life where I was like, should I keep doing this? 15:34.800 --> 15:37.904 [SPEAKER_01]: But when it comes down to like, what makes me happy, it's this job. 15:38.484 --> 15:43.310 [SPEAKER_01]: At the same time, if I want to give someone advice about honoring their soft side, I don't know how. 15:43.711 --> 15:44.332 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I don't know. 15:44.392 --> 15:45.794 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how to do this without obsession. 15:46.536 --> 16:04.552 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think it's because it is such an entrepreneurial job and it's a good lot of people don't go into it thinking like I'm entrepreneurial and like starting my little business and you know, your own role in the Dexter on clients like everything right you're like building your own little infrastructure business of one even within a large agency because you are your own 16:05.473 --> 16:32.181 [SPEAKER_03]: advocate in that sense so yeah I don't I don't know I haven't really quite figured out the answer because I do think this job requires a certain level of intensity because it's a sales job you know when we talked about that before as well where we're essentially sales people like you kind of talk about what you're saying but you know we're we're agents obviously and a certain type of agent but we're sales people at the end of the day and there is no way to be a sales person without a certain amount of hustle like I just don't think 16:33.061 --> 16:34.362 [SPEAKER_03]: those two things align. 16:34.582 --> 16:40.866 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think we have to know the survey for people who have left agenting and yeah, what were the reasons and are you well? 16:41.947 --> 16:44.629 [SPEAKER_01]: We're sales people in a buyers market. 16:44.969 --> 16:46.390 [SPEAKER_01]: That is an important distinction. 16:47.291 --> 16:49.032 [SPEAKER_01]: Like that is a very important distinction. 16:49.232 --> 16:51.233 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're not selling water in the desert. 16:51.874 --> 16:52.254 [SPEAKER_01]: We're not. 16:53.355 --> 16:55.436 [SPEAKER_01]: We're sales people in a buyers market. 16:55.636 --> 16:57.217 [SPEAKER_01]: Like how are you not going to hustle? 16:58.078 --> 16:59.719 [SPEAKER_01]: Please, someone actually answering this question. 16:59.739 --> 17:00.499 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm actually curious. 17:02.716 --> 17:04.118 [SPEAKER_03]: No, I, I'm with you. 17:04.138 --> 17:05.419 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I just, I don't know. 17:05.459 --> 17:14.189 [SPEAKER_03]: I guess I struggle with the idea that everybody has to find their own balance and they come at it in their own way. 17:14.209 --> 17:14.289 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. 17:14.309 --> 17:15.451 [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, yeah. 17:15.471 --> 17:15.711 [SPEAKER_03]: I don't know. 17:15.731 --> 17:18.675 [SPEAKER_03]: I guess my greater question is maybe, is there a way? 17:20.131 --> 17:23.255 [SPEAKER_03]: Is there a way to achieve work life balance without burning out? 17:23.515 --> 17:25.978 [SPEAKER_03]: And I think most of us figure it out eventually. 17:25.998 --> 17:26.078 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. 17:26.799 --> 17:28.241 [SPEAKER_03]: But it's hard to invite. 17:28.261 --> 17:30.844 [SPEAKER_03]: It's not something you can advise somebody on how to do it, right? 17:30.864 --> 17:32.506 [SPEAKER_03]: It's like everybody figures out on them. 17:33.567 --> 17:36.531 [SPEAKER_01]: Can you host such and still embrace a soft life? 17:37.252 --> 17:37.993 [SPEAKER_01]: Is that possible? 17:39.416 --> 17:42.278 [SPEAKER_03]: And that's what I think the kind of the question, the greater question is. 17:42.318 --> 17:51.466 [SPEAKER_03]: But anyway, anybody's listening has the answers, drop them in our YouTube comments here, or yeah, let us know what you think on the matter because I certainly haven't figured it out. 17:52.026 --> 17:53.948 [SPEAKER_01]: If you have the answers, you should sell the answer. 17:54.128 --> 17:55.790 [SPEAKER_01]: People listening because it's a big deal. 17:55.970 --> 17:57.631 [SPEAKER_01]: Like you should be selling it, just saying. 17:59.613 --> 18:00.293 [SPEAKER_01]: Just so you know. 18:01.294 --> 18:03.296 [SPEAKER_03]: All right, now a message from our sponsors. 18:04.994 --> 18:06.515 [SPEAKER_03]: All right, and we're back. 18:06.755 --> 18:09.276 [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, CCC, so let's talk a little bit about summer and publishing. 18:09.296 --> 18:23.122 [SPEAKER_03]: We kind of briefly talked about it, but a lot of people seem to our show are aspiring authors and other lots of authors that listen to us and people in publishing who have different perspectives on this, but everybody's like, oh, everybody talks about summer being slow with a slow meme. 18:23.542 --> 18:29.465 [SPEAKER_03]: So I kind of wanted to give a little bit of context to what summers look like for me and obviously again, 18:30.265 --> 18:34.367 [SPEAKER_03]: Everybody's a bit different, but there's everything from summer Fridays, which we can explain. 18:34.427 --> 18:48.192 [SPEAKER_03]: So summer Fridays, it's not unique to publishing in general, but it is completely common across the whole spectrum of the publishing world, which is people work one extra hour from Monday to Thursday so that they can get their Friday afternoons off. 18:48.292 --> 18:50.072 [SPEAKER_03]: So that's what summer Fridays are. 18:50.192 --> 18:51.613 [SPEAKER_03]: And I'm sure most of you familiar with this. 18:51.693 --> 18:59.636 [SPEAKER_03]: So it kind of leads to a culture of people taking more Fridays off in general, because it's like only a half day they have to take off or 19:00.276 --> 19:08.823 [SPEAKER_03]: Sometimes, especially for people more junior in their career, they'll actually spend Friday afternoons doing the things that they didn't get to in the rest of the week because they're in the hell, it's a quiet office. 19:09.003 --> 19:10.945 [SPEAKER_03]: I can get through all of this. 19:11.245 --> 19:12.546 [SPEAKER_03]: So there's the summer Fridays. 19:12.866 --> 19:14.067 [SPEAKER_03]: They're catching up on reading. 19:14.087 --> 19:19.792 [SPEAKER_03]: I know a lot of authors wonder like, oh, should I be querying in the summer because like, patients are always saying, it's quiet time. 19:20.172 --> 19:24.574 [SPEAKER_03]: But a lot of us catch up on our reading in the summer because we have less noise with other things. 19:24.614 --> 19:25.954 [SPEAKER_03]: So that's super common as well. 19:26.775 --> 19:28.475 [SPEAKER_03]: And then the pace of acquisition. 19:28.615 --> 19:34.018 [SPEAKER_03]: So obviously, you know, we still have clients out on submission and books under option and all of this other stuff. 19:34.158 --> 19:38.159 [SPEAKER_03]: And so right now I'm waiting on an offer for something. 19:38.299 --> 19:44.182 [SPEAKER_03]: But it tends to be a little bit slower because people they need to prove, you know, editors need approvals from their bosses or their bosses boss. 19:44.542 --> 19:47.043 [SPEAKER_03]: And if that person's a way that that can delay things and then 19:47.523 --> 19:51.445 [SPEAKER_03]: Obviously, I want to let all the editors know who are considering the projects that I have an offer. 19:51.545 --> 19:57.008 [SPEAKER_03]: So it just tends to move a little bit slower in that regard, because somebody's boss is always off. 19:57.068 --> 20:00.410 [SPEAKER_03]: But Cecie, do you want to yeah, elucidate on what your summers look like? 20:01.351 --> 20:04.193 [SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty much the same experience as yours. 20:04.233 --> 20:04.833 [SPEAKER_01]: I think that 20:06.074 --> 20:10.080 [SPEAKER_01]: Some of our job has to do with relationships and interacting with people. 20:10.260 --> 20:17.330 [SPEAKER_01]: And we require information from people, whether that's an offer, whether that's connecting to discuss a project that an editor wants to commission. 20:17.350 --> 20:20.894 [SPEAKER_01]: And that part, I think, the pace changes, but then 20:21.775 --> 20:26.278 [SPEAKER_01]: I personally really like the fact that I have more time to read and more time to catch up on things. 20:27.118 --> 20:34.822 [SPEAKER_01]: I also take a lot of time to like scout projects because there's so many books that I'm interested in seeing in the world, but then we need an author to write it. 20:34.842 --> 20:35.643 [SPEAKER_01]: Where's this author? 20:35.663 --> 20:37.524 [SPEAKER_01]: We're talking about nonfiction here, people. 20:37.724 --> 20:38.724 [SPEAKER_01]: In case everyone's going, what? 20:38.945 --> 20:42.767 [SPEAKER_01]: For example, like I've been wanting an expose on tipping culture for years. 20:43.647 --> 20:44.708 [SPEAKER_01]: I need this book in my life. 20:45.548 --> 20:46.709 [SPEAKER_01]: And so yay spent time. 20:47.229 --> 20:49.591 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, researching others that could possibly write this. 20:49.731 --> 20:51.492 [SPEAKER_01]: Who could possibly write this expose? 20:52.052 --> 21:01.419 [SPEAKER_01]: And so I think that it all comes down to the parts of our job that we control more versus the parts of our job that we control less only because they're more collaborative. 21:01.639 --> 21:02.680 [SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate seasons. 21:03.340 --> 21:06.222 [SPEAKER_01]: I am someone who maybe because it wasn't always my reality. 21:06.282 --> 21:07.443 [SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate the fact that 21:07.883 --> 21:21.908 [SPEAKER_01]: Somewhere's different from fall and fall is different from winter and winter's different from spring that not all parts of the world are like that Some places you live in perpetual summer and so that's that's that's really like it's a positive thing for me like I like that it makes time more special 21:23.100 --> 21:23.760 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I agree. 21:23.800 --> 21:25.121 [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, I get bookends things, right? 21:25.161 --> 21:30.284 [SPEAKER_03]: It's like, I have to do this by this day because this is the changing of the season and the pace and the culture changes. 21:30.364 --> 21:31.865 [SPEAKER_03]: So the super important. 21:31.905 --> 21:35.608 [SPEAKER_03]: So there we go, guys, books are still being bought, agents are still signing projects. 21:36.168 --> 21:37.529 [SPEAKER_03]: Everything still happens in the summer. 21:37.629 --> 21:39.150 [SPEAKER_03]: Even if it's just a little bit slower. 21:39.810 --> 21:43.834 [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, somebody DM'd me, you know, people DM'd me all the time, so that's not new. 21:44.194 --> 21:51.600 [SPEAKER_03]: But somebody DM'd me to pitch me their services, which were they are a personal assistant to authors. 21:52.000 --> 21:55.363 [SPEAKER_03]: And so, you know, this is something that, you know, certain authors have. 21:55.423 --> 21:57.805 [SPEAKER_03]: Some don't obviously cost money to have an assistant. 21:57.885 --> 21:59.347 [SPEAKER_03]: Got me thinking a little bit about 21:59.747 --> 22:07.694 [SPEAKER_03]: you know, how many authors these days actually have assistance because it's so much more common now for somebody to need help with social media and so on and so forth. 22:07.734 --> 22:12.338 [SPEAKER_03]: So CCDU, do you any of your clients have assistance to help them with like a man or socials? 22:14.380 --> 22:17.023 [SPEAKER_01]: Not fiction clients, but nonfiction clients, yeah. 22:17.223 --> 22:18.604 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I have a couple who do. 22:18.804 --> 22:23.529 [SPEAKER_01]: But I think they would have these assistance even if they weren't writing books just because of their demanding jobs, you know? 22:23.889 --> 22:25.430 [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, interesting. 22:25.450 --> 22:25.971 [SPEAKER_01]: What about yours? 22:27.188 --> 22:29.990 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I do have some that have helped somewhere. 22:30.030 --> 22:41.916 [SPEAKER_03]: It's like more in men oriented because there's just like a certain volume of foreign rights, stuff to manage and just there is a lot of admin, once you get to a kind of a certain level of management of intellectual property. 22:41.936 --> 22:42.877 [SPEAKER_03]: It's a lot of work. 22:43.297 --> 22:44.858 [SPEAKER_03]: And then there's obviously people who need help just was 22:44.898 --> 22:51.807 [SPEAKER_03]: social media followers just to see who was following me and what they were thinking about the topic. 22:51.827 --> 22:53.909 [SPEAKER_03]: So I got a hundred and seventy one replies. 22:53.949 --> 22:57.574 [SPEAKER_03]: So the question was how many published authors have an assistant? 22:57.934 --> 23:02.039 [SPEAKER_03]: So hundred and seventy one replies and I put three different categories. 23:02.220 --> 23:02.720 [SPEAKER_03]: One was 23:03.341 --> 23:04.382 [SPEAKER_03]: Do you have an assistant? 23:04.943 --> 23:06.625 [SPEAKER_03]: The other one was no, I don't have an assistant. 23:06.685 --> 23:11.470 [SPEAKER_03]: And then the next answer was people who just want to see the answer, people like no see about the question itself. 23:11.510 --> 23:14.333 [SPEAKER_03]: So, I'm just one to see the answer. 23:14.393 --> 23:21.180 [SPEAKER_03]: So I know it was a lot of aspirational authors, you know, just wanted to get the information or other agents or other editors. 23:21.600 --> 23:25.781 [SPEAKER_03]: twenty five had no assistant and four had an assistant. 23:25.881 --> 23:32.562 [SPEAKER_03]: So that is approximately a very small sample size, but sixteen percent potentially of published authors have a assistant. 23:32.622 --> 23:44.145 [SPEAKER_03]: So that doesn't really surprise me because we know that there's only a certain percentage of authors who have the volume of work that need an assistant kind of coming back to the admin side and the social media side of how much work is required. 23:44.565 --> 23:50.446 [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, I just thought that was interesting about who needs assistance and why and when that would maybe come into play. 23:51.746 --> 23:53.867 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, especially because you're doing a creative job, right? 23:53.908 --> 24:01.313 [SPEAKER_01]: So if you can outsource admin stuff, if you can outsource the stuff that does take a mental load, why not? 24:01.373 --> 24:02.613 [SPEAKER_01]: Like if that's something people want to do. 24:02.674 --> 24:05.576 [SPEAKER_01]: And these days it's so much easier because everything's virtual anyway. 24:06.516 --> 24:07.577 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, totally. 24:07.697 --> 24:07.857 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. 24:08.157 --> 24:13.381 [SPEAKER_03]: And I know that there are some assistance who work with like a bunch of authors and they have specialties and certain fields and things like that. 24:13.461 --> 24:20.586 [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, super interesting job for people who want to want to help out, but I don't know how much demand there is for people who are going to need assistance. 24:21.098 --> 24:23.119 [SPEAKER_03]: All right, CC, where do you want to go to next? 24:23.159 --> 24:28.020 [SPEAKER_03]: Anything else that we haven't talked about or do want to go to are links section of our conversation? 24:28.821 --> 24:29.961 [SPEAKER_03]: Now I think we can go to our links. 24:30.021 --> 24:30.541 [SPEAKER_03]: Let's do that. 24:31.622 --> 24:35.503 [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so a few links that kind of stood out to us this week that we wanted to talk about. 24:36.183 --> 24:42.946 [SPEAKER_03]: One of them was from the bookseller and it's about the concept of AI Slop. 24:43.326 --> 24:46.267 [SPEAKER_03]: And I think you can like probably imagine what AI Slop is. 24:46.707 --> 24:56.211 [SPEAKER_03]: but I'll give you a definition, which is essentially self-published books that flood the marketplace generally written by AI. 24:56.391 --> 25:01.414 [SPEAKER_03]: It could be a rip off of an existing book or it could just be like nonsense. 25:01.754 --> 25:08.097 [SPEAKER_03]: But it's this idea of just like content flooding the self-published ecosystem to create so much content out there. 25:08.497 --> 25:13.679 [SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, I think this article does such a great job of kind of tackling so many of the issues with it. 25:13.719 --> 25:15.060 [SPEAKER_03]: So the article came out 25:15.720 --> 25:38.972 [SPEAKER_03]: August fifth that was written by Lauren Brown in the bookseller and the title is AI Slop versions of books on retailers like Amazon risk harming consumer confidence and I think this is a really important article to talk about because it impacts so many things like the negative effects of author brands customer confusion information overload in terms of how much contact we get on the internet. 25:39.232 --> 25:40.572 [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, I want to talk about this one. 25:40.652 --> 25:41.773 [SPEAKER_03]: Did you have a chance to check it out? 25:43.033 --> 25:44.314 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely, and I loved it. 25:44.354 --> 25:45.195 [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for sharing. 25:45.215 --> 25:46.235 [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know. 25:46.315 --> 25:51.359 [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like our listeners are hearing the term AI Slop and they're going, oh, okay, that's redundant. 25:53.301 --> 25:56.143 [SPEAKER_01]: But yes, they're essentially like, so this is a ripoff. 25:56.163 --> 26:02.788 [SPEAKER_01]: This is a total ripoff situation with potential copyright infringements, like potentially so many legal issues. 26:02.968 --> 26:04.149 [SPEAKER_01]: Imagine writing a book. 26:04.469 --> 26:08.692 [SPEAKER_01]: Imagine going through the process that everyone who follows our show knows is hard. 26:09.333 --> 26:16.028 [SPEAKER_01]: And then you have a book out there and then someone else will not ask someone I suppose like and I guess someone had to do it but like 26:16.368 --> 26:44.909 [SPEAKER_01]: All of a sudden AI, like AI comes in, like AI generated work, and rips off your book, and either copies your title or builds off it and makes it seem like it's your book, and summarizes your content, but not in a way that's intelligent at all, like in a way that makes your content seem dumb, so not only again, also many legal issues, but also insulting to your work and harmful to your brand, and because the person buying this is obviously not aware of what they're doing, like it's an honest mistake, and so 26:45.798 --> 26:47.179 [SPEAKER_01]: It is so mind-blowing. 26:47.199 --> 26:50.300 [SPEAKER_01]: It's just so mind-blowing to me that this is the world we're living in. 26:50.360 --> 26:51.220 [SPEAKER_01]: And this is not new. 26:51.560 --> 26:59.664 [SPEAKER_01]: I remember this happened to Jane Friedman, where she has obviously books, and someone kind of did an AI slot version of her book. 27:00.604 --> 27:06.467 [SPEAKER_01]: And I know that I have clients who are experts, and so AI versions of workbooks. 27:07.007 --> 27:32.652 [SPEAKER_01]: based on their bugs come out and obviously like this is just unacceptable and if anyone reads the article like people did ask Amazon what are you going to do about this and I just felt that their answer was just so disappointing because it's super vague it's essentially saying things like we care about this and we take this seriously but there's no actionable thing that we can count on as readers and as publishing professionals to protect authors so it's just it's very very discouraging to me 27:33.252 --> 27:38.676 [SPEAKER_01]: And I love the fact that the article focuses on consumer confidence because I don't know, it looks like a stock market. 27:38.716 --> 27:42.519 [SPEAKER_01]: Like the stock market is something that is, I think, fairly objective, right? 27:42.539 --> 27:45.802 [SPEAKER_01]: Like you have fundamentals, you have charts and graphs and all these sorts of things. 27:45.842 --> 27:50.565 [SPEAKER_01]: And yet even the stock market tracks consumer confidence because consumer confidence matters. 27:50.625 --> 27:58.111 [SPEAKER_01]: Like whether people are feeling optimistic or pessimistic engaging that matters because it influences people's willingness to spend a money. 27:59.223 --> 28:05.447 [SPEAKER_01]: And if you take that to books, like people are buying books, the books arriving in their homes are like terrible books. 28:06.187 --> 28:10.609 [SPEAKER_01]: And so they're going to go, well, next time they buy a book, they're going to go, well, I'm not going to spend this money on this book. 28:11.330 --> 28:13.871 [SPEAKER_01]: People, we already don't have enough readers in the world. 28:14.111 --> 28:16.953 [SPEAKER_01]: We don't have to destroy the confidence of the readers we have. 28:17.173 --> 28:18.934 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, this is a serious, serious issue. 28:18.974 --> 28:20.455 [SPEAKER_01]: And I just don't know what's going to happen about it. 28:20.475 --> 28:22.196 [SPEAKER_01]: But like, it's not good. 28:23.406 --> 28:30.069 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, well, one of the Amazon responses was essentially like we changed the number of uploads people can do in a day for self-pub. 28:30.089 --> 28:31.729 [SPEAKER_03]: I think you guys remember hearing this news. 28:31.770 --> 28:36.171 [SPEAKER_03]: I can't remember if it was last year or earlier this year so that it would slow down the slopp. 28:36.191 --> 28:42.234 [SPEAKER_03]: But like it does not affect like it's not going to change what actually happens with this content and people keep doing this. 28:42.754 --> 28:43.375 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I don't know. 28:43.555 --> 28:53.468 [SPEAKER_03]: It happened to one of my authors really recently, the book was doing super well on the Amazon charts and so somebody clearly saw that it was doing well on the Amazon charts and wanted to piggyback off of this. 28:53.768 --> 28:55.771 [SPEAKER_03]: It's also not unique to books. 28:55.791 --> 28:57.153 [SPEAKER_03]: You know, I also think about fashion, right? 28:57.173 --> 28:57.934 [SPEAKER_03]: When somebody sees 28:58.614 --> 29:18.444 [SPEAKER_03]: something coming down the runway and then Zara and HNM or whoever else goes and makes a knockoff and you know it's in the stores in a couple weeks after the designers painstakingly create these beautiful designs and then we have fast fashion ripping it off for profit so you know it does happen in so many creative industries it doesn't make it okay and I think what I guess what I find so alarming is 29:19.204 --> 29:21.306 [SPEAKER_03]: in this information age of AI. 29:21.426 --> 29:30.594 [SPEAKER_03]: I find that information overload also really concerning because if somebody goes to wherever they get their books, you know, they're typing it in, the title that they want, something else comes up. 29:30.634 --> 29:32.056 [SPEAKER_03]: They click a by accident. 29:32.296 --> 29:35.259 [SPEAKER_03]: How again, how are they going to know whether they're getting the right thing or not? 29:36.019 --> 29:40.924 [SPEAKER_03]: And then they're not going to maybe they won't buy a book by that author again because I know that author, you know, that was confusing. 29:40.964 --> 29:41.925 [SPEAKER_03]: I wasn't sure what I thought. 29:42.425 --> 29:47.351 [SPEAKER_03]: that title was misspelled by one letter or the author's name was misspelled by one letter. 29:47.391 --> 29:54.298 [SPEAKER_03]: And to me, it just affects author brands so much and it's just even more important of a reason to just like protect your author brand. 29:54.358 --> 29:59.845 [SPEAKER_03]: So immensely, so it's like so clear when this is actually affecting authors. 30:00.365 --> 30:02.208 [SPEAKER_03]: I can't also come back to community, right? 30:02.228 --> 30:09.699 [SPEAKER_03]: Because certain authors who have great communities, they'll say, hey, everybody go report this and then everybody goes and report said and is able to kind of help out. 30:09.759 --> 30:14.967 [SPEAKER_03]: So I'm hoping, again, I'm the eternal optimist that it will bring us back to kind of 30:15.427 --> 30:38.727 [SPEAKER_03]: the community element of being there for each other and again collectively reporting these when we see them because we cannot let this just go right on by because it's yeah it's it's not going to get fixed it's going to get a lot worse especially as AI gets more competent so yeah I don't I find it's really alarming yeah from your lips from your optimistic lips 30:40.768 --> 30:42.248 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so that was a great article to read. 30:42.369 --> 30:46.110 [SPEAKER_03]: So the next article, so this was definitely making the rounds. 30:46.170 --> 30:47.930 [SPEAKER_03]: And there's lots to talk about about it. 30:47.950 --> 30:52.291 [SPEAKER_03]: And as a follower, also made sure that we saw Revena Resue, also made sure that we saw this. 30:52.712 --> 30:56.833 [SPEAKER_03]: So author Nikki Payne wrote about, I know you guys have heard this. 30:57.593 --> 30:59.894 [SPEAKER_03]: This in so many different ways and so many different contexts. 30:59.934 --> 31:10.157 [SPEAKER_03]: But the Sydney Swiny dilemma, and we're not going to kind of recap it all because by the time this has come out, you guys are very well versed in what was happening with the ad campaign, Sydney Swiny's ad campaign. 31:10.677 --> 31:16.580 [SPEAKER_03]: But basically, Nikki Payne wrote a great article on her sub-stack called Sydney Sweeney in the White Utopia. 31:16.960 --> 31:20.362 [SPEAKER_03]: And she kind of brings a bunch of this back to kind of critical theory. 31:20.422 --> 31:32.169 [SPEAKER_03]: She brings it back to how we can look at this uproar and this, all of this, you know, in the context of the culture industry that we're in, which is book culture and how this all connects. 31:32.229 --> 31:32.489 [SPEAKER_03]: And so 31:32.889 --> 31:38.332 [SPEAKER_03]: There's also really, weaves into the conversation that we had with my author Bailey Hand in New York. 31:38.372 --> 31:48.277 [SPEAKER_03]: I know I talked about that great panel that we did for eight, three, one books at McNally Jackson talking about cowboy romance and what does that all mean and we had some really great conversations. 31:48.637 --> 31:56.346 [SPEAKER_03]: kind of getting at some of the things that Nikki was talking about, which is, you know, romance novels and genres that can give us these white utopias. 31:56.906 --> 31:58.148 [SPEAKER_03]: And so check out the article. 31:58.188 --> 31:58.989 [SPEAKER_03]: It's really great. 31:59.049 --> 32:03.314 [SPEAKER_03]: But what I wanted to kind of focus on was what you kind of scroll down in an article. 32:03.354 --> 32:06.317 [SPEAKER_03]: She says, here's where it gets interesting for those of us who read romance. 32:06.397 --> 32:09.561 [SPEAKER_03]: These white utopia fantasies are everywhere in our TBR piles. 32:10.318 --> 32:17.861 [SPEAKER_03]: And so she breaks down four different types of romance categories that have a tendency to fall into these what utobias. 32:18.241 --> 32:21.922 [SPEAKER_03]: And so she says hockey romance where everyone looks the same and shares the same values. 32:21.962 --> 32:25.243 [SPEAKER_03]: Hockey players are powerful, aggressive, sporty, but safely white as well. 32:25.723 --> 32:28.985 [SPEAKER_03]: Calboy Ranch is where it's quote traditional living and quote is romanticized. 32:29.385 --> 32:35.747 [SPEAKER_03]: These are race indigenous displacement, black ranch labor, Mexican, and Vicarro origins to create fantasies of white frontier life. 32:36.201 --> 32:41.046 [SPEAKER_03]: Mafia families were quote bloodlines and quote and quote heritage and quote, term and everything. 32:41.406 --> 32:45.750 [SPEAKER_03]: These romanticize ethnic and salarity and blood purity as loyalty and family values. 32:46.351 --> 32:51.035 [SPEAKER_03]: And small towns where the biggest conflict is whether the coffee shop will close, not systemic racism. 32:51.136 --> 32:56.381 [SPEAKER_03]: These imagined spaces where social problems are individual and economic, never structural or racial. 32:56.781 --> 32:57.281 [SPEAKER_03]: was the quote. 32:57.381 --> 33:01.442 [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, I think it was a very, very interesting article. 33:02.182 --> 33:06.503 [SPEAKER_03]: I love articles where we take something happening in the kind of current zeitgeist moment. 33:06.543 --> 33:07.463 [SPEAKER_03]: It's having a big upboard. 33:07.483 --> 33:13.504 [SPEAKER_03]: And like there are so many ways that we can apply that to the lens of how we create and consume the culture in our book world as well. 33:13.624 --> 33:18.505 [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, I want to talk a little bit about the different types of romance as well a little bit further. 33:18.545 --> 33:20.985 [SPEAKER_03]: But CCG, do you have any thoughts before I go on my diet trying? 33:21.825 --> 33:25.386 [SPEAKER_01]: My favorite part of the article was 33:26.610 --> 33:33.093 [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't have it in front of me now, but it's a line that essentially read, you know, be curious about why you like what you like. 33:34.034 --> 33:43.338 [SPEAKER_01]: And to me, that is such a smart encapsulation of truly just living a life that's more aligned with the values we have. 33:43.418 --> 33:51.062 [SPEAKER_01]: You know, when it comes to discussions of any of the isms and we'll talk about racism, but any of the isms really 33:52.062 --> 33:58.704 [SPEAKER_01]: It's not the people who wake up and saying, Guymo, why it's supremacist, that are the problem, because these people probably are lost case. 33:58.864 --> 34:01.465 [SPEAKER_01]: They have definitely the problem, but no one's talking about that. 34:01.505 --> 34:06.587 [SPEAKER_01]: We're talking about the fact that sometimes it's unexamined and you're actually perpetuating problems without realizing it. 34:08.948 --> 34:30.444 [SPEAKER_01]: the work and how do you do the work and I think again it begins with curiosity it begins with going hey why do I like this you know I'm not the surface reason the deeper reason it involves self reflection it involves really spending some time with with with with our own thoughts and we all have it we all have things that we you know need to self reflect about but I just thought that was so fascinating you know why do we like what we like 34:30.724 --> 34:38.614 [SPEAKER_01]: And I am not someone who gravitates towards these small town settings and the hockey romances and all that as a reader. 34:39.255 --> 34:40.817 [SPEAKER_01]: But I do gravitate towards other things. 34:40.917 --> 34:41.497 [SPEAKER_01]: And why? 34:41.718 --> 34:42.359 [SPEAKER_01]: Why do I do that? 34:42.379 --> 34:43.940 [SPEAKER_01]: And I thought that was super, super interesting. 34:44.121 --> 34:48.166 [SPEAKER_01]: I really appreciated the way she encouraged us to do that. 34:48.206 --> 34:49.027 [SPEAKER_01]: And I thought that was so great. 34:50.060 --> 34:55.784 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I thought it was really interesting about, yeah, thinking critically about the values that are reinforced and why they're reinforced. 34:56.005 --> 35:01.008 [SPEAKER_03]: And so on the panel that we were at, so my client Bailey Hannah, was at a panel that I've just talked about. 35:01.469 --> 35:05.972 [SPEAKER_03]: And we got in so many great conversations about so many things. 35:06.032 --> 35:13.117 [SPEAKER_03]: And one of the things that Bailey had said about why she can't read hockey romances and a lot I find, I would be so curious about what 35:14.078 --> 35:31.738 [SPEAKER_03]: demographically and geographically which women and men are reading these hockey romances because so many people who grew up in hockey culture and we don't have to go into the big hockey Canada scandal unless we really want to but so many of us at grew up in this like deep hockey culture are so repulsed by those novels because 35:32.499 --> 35:38.601 [SPEAKER_03]: It reinforces so many things that felt so picky about so many boys and men that we grew up and grew up around. 35:39.062 --> 35:44.664 [SPEAKER_03]: And so the fact that people can idealize that some people just go like, oh, like, I just I can't go there. 35:45.184 --> 35:46.505 [SPEAKER_03]: So I think that's really interesting. 35:46.585 --> 35:47.325 [SPEAKER_03]: And then back to 35:47.745 --> 35:51.008 [SPEAKER_03]: The cowboy ranch is where traditional living is romanticized. 35:51.128 --> 35:54.131 [SPEAKER_03]: Oh, it's incredibly valid, incredibly valid points. 35:54.211 --> 35:55.512 [SPEAKER_03]: I think that's super important. 35:55.832 --> 36:04.240 [SPEAKER_03]: As I said, Nikki's quotes were, they are race indigenous displacement, black ranch labor, and Mexican victory origins to great fantasies of white frontier life, super fascinating. 36:04.280 --> 36:13.168 [SPEAKER_03]: And one of the things I think that really drew me to Bailey Hannah's work, in particular, because, you know, as CC and I know, there's so many different authors out there looking for representation. 36:13.775 --> 36:17.418 [SPEAKER_03]: And we only get to work with such a select group of authors. 36:17.458 --> 36:24.584 [SPEAKER_03]: And I think one of the things that was so important to me about Bailey's work in particular was how working class her ranchers work. 36:25.145 --> 36:31.090 [SPEAKER_03]: And so because there's this whole like yellowstone thing where it's like these people are billionaires already and that power dynamic. 36:31.370 --> 36:34.793 [SPEAKER_03]: It was everything from the financial side of it and the corporate side of it. 36:35.113 --> 36:37.375 [SPEAKER_03]: down to the land, right, in the colonization of the land. 36:37.395 --> 36:43.780 [SPEAKER_03]: And what I love so much about Bailey's world, in particular, is that there are no rich renters. 36:43.820 --> 36:54.048 [SPEAKER_03]: These are people living completely blue-collar, working class lives, because that is the reality of most people who live in exists on farms, and it is really hard to making a living working on farms. 36:54.068 --> 36:59.813 [SPEAKER_03]: So the romanticization of this, like, traditional living is so historical. 37:00.513 --> 37:04.894 [SPEAKER_03]: And that sense of like the romanticization of it because the reality of it is really dirty. 37:04.914 --> 37:11.656 [SPEAKER_03]: I mean, Bailey talks about like inner books all the time, but like how physically dirty it is, you know, it's not like you're on your way to horse walking through the sunset. 37:11.776 --> 37:12.536 [SPEAKER_03]: It's very gritty. 37:12.596 --> 37:13.496 [SPEAKER_03]: It's very dirty. 37:13.596 --> 37:16.837 [SPEAKER_03]: She always talks in her books about like everybody's up at four in the morning. 37:17.357 --> 37:18.518 [SPEAKER_03]: Nobody has a day off. 37:18.718 --> 37:20.118 [SPEAKER_03]: Nobody's making any money from this. 37:20.178 --> 37:22.679 [SPEAKER_03]: And anyway, so one of the things I really love about Bailey's 37:23.179 --> 37:28.185 [SPEAKER_03]: cowboy romances is the class dynamic that she tackles in her cowboy romances. 37:28.246 --> 37:30.448 [SPEAKER_03]: So that's one of the reasons I love Wells Ranch. 37:31.470 --> 37:37.357 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's class dynamics are just really interesting fodder for storytelling and it really makes us think about 37:38.283 --> 37:51.655 [SPEAKER_01]: the greater isms, like I said, for the people who want to be living a life that's aligned with their values and for the people who want to celebrate diversity and want to essentially evolve as human beings. 37:51.695 --> 38:00.122 [SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like that's probably all of us listening here to our show, then being curious about that and just exploring that, that's just so good. 38:01.143 --> 38:10.470 [SPEAKER_01]: The lost causes are the lost causes, like I wish they have a fifties, like I wish them a piffinies is what I'm saying, but probably that won't happen and probably they're not listening to us. 38:12.658 --> 38:14.179 [SPEAKER_03]: We wish you all the piffinies. 38:14.239 --> 38:15.520 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's the message. 38:15.940 --> 38:20.704 [SPEAKER_03]: Okay, I think the last kind of big topic we wanted to talk about was the kid lip market. 38:20.744 --> 38:22.325 [SPEAKER_03]: There's really interesting article. 38:22.345 --> 38:30.731 [SPEAKER_03]: So it came out on July eleven and publishers weekly written by Joanna O'Sullivan, the title of the article, Breaking Boundaries. 38:30.811 --> 38:33.553 [SPEAKER_03]: Why are authors crossing over into adult fiction? 38:34.413 --> 38:52.957 [SPEAKER_03]: And this was a really well done kind of more long form article on a lot of authors who wrote YA maybe in the kind of like, two thousands, early, twenty-tens and how they have grown up, how their audiences have grown up because I think everybody was noticing this trash and say everybody. 38:53.437 --> 38:59.279 [SPEAKER_03]: Most people in publishing were paying attention for note was noticing this trend of in publisher's marketplace and publisher's weekly. 38:59.319 --> 39:00.499 [SPEAKER_03]: There's all these deals of like, 39:00.883 --> 39:03.265 [SPEAKER_03]: best selling YA authors, adult debut. 39:03.465 --> 39:04.706 [SPEAKER_03]: And I was like, oh, okay. 39:04.966 --> 39:11.012 [SPEAKER_03]: You know, a huge moment of the movement out of the Kiddlet market in general, a lot of contraction, the Kiddlet market. 39:11.392 --> 39:15.736 [SPEAKER_03]: I think everybody has kind of been following the publishing news knows that the middle grade market is really tough. 39:15.936 --> 39:17.257 [SPEAKER_03]: You know, Barnes and Noble is a taking very many. 39:17.377 --> 39:33.692 [SPEAKER_03]: titles anymore book banning publishers are being a lot more cautious unfortunately but like what they're putting into the kidlet market so there's been this kind of mass exodus out of the YA kidlet space and so I found this article really interesting and there were some really interesting stats and I know CC wanted to get into the stats as well. 39:35.082 --> 39:36.864 [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I loved the article. 39:36.884 --> 39:39.326 [SPEAKER_01]: I get sad when I hear about contracting markets. 39:39.386 --> 39:57.684 [SPEAKER_01]: I know that that's a part of life and I also understand that when we have a boom, it's normal for us to then later have a fall in that I just to me the most interesting thing about the way market and it's not a market I sell in at all and never have and so it's the readership. 39:58.470 --> 40:02.872 [SPEAKER_01]: So many readers of YA are adults, middle aged adults often. 40:02.892 --> 40:12.417 [SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think enough people realize that, yeah, you're writing it for youth, for kids, but people often want to be live the raw and angst and the first. 40:13.038 --> 40:14.659 [SPEAKER_01]: And so you read those novels. 40:14.759 --> 40:19.721 [SPEAKER_01]: And what does it say that the market's contracting? 40:19.841 --> 40:24.544 [SPEAKER_01]: What does it say about where we are as a society in a larger way? 40:25.104 --> 40:30.326 [SPEAKER_01]: What does it say that people are gravitating towards, like, authors in the space or gravitating towards adult stories? 40:30.426 --> 40:34.588 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure, and I think Carly, you mentioned this when we chatted about talking about this. 40:34.728 --> 40:36.549 [SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure that banning is also a part of it, right? 40:36.569 --> 40:37.389 [SPEAKER_01]: Like, the book bands. 40:37.610 --> 40:39.931 [SPEAKER_01]: So it's just, it's just a really big topic. 40:39.971 --> 40:43.552 [SPEAKER_01]: And I, I never like contracting markets. 40:43.992 --> 40:46.693 [SPEAKER_01]: That's never something that makes me happy with reading, with publishing. 40:47.114 --> 40:49.795 [SPEAKER_01]: But I think it's interesting to see how 40:51.194 --> 40:56.999 [SPEAKER_01]: So much of what readers are yearning for has to do with more delth themes. 40:58.059 --> 40:59.761 [SPEAKER_01]: What does that say about us as a society? 41:02.062 --> 41:03.283 [SPEAKER_03]: That's interesting for sure. 41:03.824 --> 41:05.945 [SPEAKER_03]: OK, some stats. 41:05.965 --> 41:16.434 [SPEAKER_03]: So one of the stats was, according to a twenty twenty four research performed in the UK by Nielsen book commissioned by Huffer Collins UK near the two thirds of why readers are adults. 41:17.094 --> 41:39.440 [SPEAKER_03]: With twenty eight percent over the age of twenty eight reflecting a trend that's been building for more than a decade along with that shift the lines of the blurb between what's expected in a YA novel what's considered adult from behavior protagonist of the subject matter who is YA for is a question that is circulated among readers parents agents in the publishing for years presence of a teen character alone is not enough to classify a book as YA 41:41.523 --> 41:46.167 [SPEAKER_03]: I'll just be really interesting, I guess I should say about how publishers kind of react and respond to this. 41:46.547 --> 41:53.933 [SPEAKER_03]: I think we've seen a couple new adult imprints pop up recently, so we need to see what they publish and is it more adult? 41:53.953 --> 41:54.774 [SPEAKER_03]: Or is it more YA? 41:54.834 --> 41:59.778 [SPEAKER_03]: Is there like a lower new adult in an upper new adult or you know, a upper YA that will be kind of 42:00.278 --> 42:01.239 [SPEAKER_03]: in that bucket as well. 42:01.299 --> 42:02.160 [SPEAKER_03]: So I don't know. 42:02.500 --> 42:04.422 [SPEAKER_03]: There's a lot of blurring of the lines here. 42:04.782 --> 42:06.043 [SPEAKER_03]: To me, it's always up to the reader. 42:06.704 --> 42:10.207 [SPEAKER_03]: We can publish these books, market them, try to get them into stories. 42:10.247 --> 42:12.929 [SPEAKER_03]: But it's up to the readers to decide who it's for. 42:13.470 --> 42:15.211 [SPEAKER_03]: We say that about crossover of anything. 42:15.671 --> 42:17.413 [SPEAKER_03]: You can market things as much as you want. 42:17.473 --> 42:20.536 [SPEAKER_03]: But it's the people that read it and interact with it and share it. 42:21.036 --> 42:24.359 [SPEAKER_03]: That's who the market is and how the market flows. 42:24.399 --> 42:27.722 [SPEAKER_03]: So I think we should have paid a lot of attention to the consumer behaviors. 42:28.322 --> 42:31.147 [SPEAKER_03]: in the white space, in the new adult space for the next little while. 42:32.509 --> 42:38.738 [SPEAKER_01]: Well, listeners or guests watchers, if anyone's watching us on YouTube, you have the power because you're readers. 42:39.439 --> 42:43.806 [SPEAKER_01]: So all stories are about power, I'm fond of saying that, so you have the power. 42:45.097 --> 42:47.077 [SPEAKER_03]: All right, well, that's it for us today. 42:47.097 --> 42:48.438 [SPEAKER_03]: I will prep this with. 42:49.518 --> 42:53.119 [SPEAKER_03]: We will not take everybody's ideas, but I do look at them at DM. 42:53.219 --> 42:55.619 [SPEAKER_03]: So if people do have articles, they want to make sure we cover. 42:55.699 --> 42:56.619 [SPEAKER_03]: And you can send me a message. 42:56.799 --> 42:59.220 [SPEAKER_03]: I will not be responding to everybody just because I can't. 42:59.320 --> 43:01.320 [SPEAKER_03]: But yeah, we're open to interesting things. 43:01.340 --> 43:08.842 [SPEAKER_03]: You guys see around the web and want to make sure that we cover because we definitely do our best to read as much as we can in terms of news articles and substacks. 43:08.882 --> 43:10.662 [SPEAKER_03]: But there's a lot of content out there. 43:10.682 --> 43:13.243 [SPEAKER_03]: And so yeah, a bunch of you send us the same article, then we'll know 43:13.743 --> 43:14.763 [SPEAKER_03]: somethings in the water. 43:14.923 --> 43:18.004 [SPEAKER_03]: So keep us in your mind when you're reading really good stuff. 43:19.145 --> 43:26.047 [SPEAKER_01]: And if you're listening to this and you go to our social media feed, leave a comment, we're really curious for your feedback. 43:26.127 --> 43:30.949 [SPEAKER_01]: And we are so appreciative of the people who have already left us comments with their feedback. 43:31.309 --> 43:35.090 [SPEAKER_01]: It really helps, Carly, and I know, like, what are people listening to? 43:35.150 --> 43:36.190 [SPEAKER_01]: What are they most liking? 43:36.210 --> 43:38.191 [SPEAKER_01]: What are they, you know, wish they could see more of? 43:38.231 --> 43:40.432 [SPEAKER_01]: So that's, that's really, really appreciated. 43:40.452 --> 43:41.192 [SPEAKER_01]: So thank you so much. 43:42.207 --> 43:45.148 [SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and we're going into the quote unquote busy season in September. 43:45.169 --> 43:50.911 [SPEAKER_03]: We're going to try to keep up our usual schedule here of dropping something interesting into your feed on Mondays. 43:50.931 --> 43:57.235 [SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, well, we'll see what gossip and news the rest of the summer bring and and move us into the back to school feeling of September. 43:57.595 --> 43:58.675 [SPEAKER_00]: Bye everyone. 43:59.576 --> 44:03.798 [SPEAKER_00]: CC Lira is a literary agent at Wendy Sherman Associates. 44:04.302 --> 44:11.994 [SPEAKER_00]: If you'd like to query CC, please refer to the submission guidelines at www.wshermen.com. 44:12.675 --> 44:16.782 [SPEAKER_00]: Carly Waters is a literary agent at PS Literary Agency. 44:17.236 --> 44:34.532 [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 and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of PS literary agency.