[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to another episode of Shooting the Shirt with Literary Agents, Carly Waters, and CC Lyra.
[SPEAKER_01]: Where we dissect publishing gossip, discuss book industry trends, and the overall state of the book business.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you'd ever wanted to grab a coffee with two literary agents, grab your mug, and pull up a chair.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hey, I am good.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is my third cup of coffee, but it is decaf.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I do one calf to decaf at the most.
[SPEAKER_02]: How about you?
[SPEAKER_02]: How many cups of coffee have you had?
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like that's a better question than how are you?
[SPEAKER_02]: We should start with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I've got one cup of coffee, one cup of tea.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now I'm working on my halfway through.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to hear that.
[SPEAKER_01]: My clinking of my ice and my ice coffee.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like ASMR.
[SPEAKER_01]: for everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Listening, or if you're watching, I need to go clanking my glass of ice coffee.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, we're, we're well caffeinated.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not, you know, that says enough.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't do ice coffee.
[SPEAKER_02]: I find the concept of ice coffee very strange.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whenever it gets hot and I'm ordering coffee, like a coffee shop, people go do you want that ice and I'm like, you know, I'm not a monster.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I know everyone listening loves iced coffee because it's just a thing here, but I was gonna say it's an American thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying to do like maybe I'm trying to get ready for my European vacation, but I'm trying to do like just like an espresso in the afternoon sometimes because you know if you don't want to do like a full hot coffee, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's just like I just need to have me and hit me with the espresso, get on with our day.
[SPEAKER_02]: Espresso and Brigadiero.
[SPEAKER_02]: The problem is this is this is my life's big problem such first-world problems.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't have caffeine even if it's fully decaf after a certain hour and I really don't Brigadiero's in the evening.
[SPEAKER_02]: So maybe one day, maybe one day, I will like when I'm on my deathbed or something, I'll have like a Brigadiero on a coffee in the evening.
[SPEAKER_02]: I've never been able to do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I always wanted to be
[SPEAKER_02]: risky, risky business.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a lot of fun things to chat about today.
[SPEAKER_01]: So much every week, you know, and I'm so glad we started doing this show every week when we kind of brainstormed what was the show going to be about or have what there be news.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was just so many ways this could have wet, but I'm glad we're doing it every week.
[SPEAKER_01]: And
[SPEAKER_01]: So anybody who is a sub-stack subscriber, a paid sub-stack subscriber to our shit about writing account, knows that we did a live last week because, you know, as you guys know, if you're listening to us on YouTube or if you're listening to us through
[SPEAKER_01]: on the RSS feeds, on Spotify, or Apple podcast, you know that the last Monday of every month is our bonus episode.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so in replacement of that CCNI did a kind of live version of shooting the ship last week, and it was really fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was, you know, we could see everybody commenting, like live when we were chatting, and it really brought me back to, you know, we both taught so many webinars over the years.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like it was kind of like podcast meets webinar format, it was really fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was so fun and kind of nice too to see like our core community.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's so many like names and handles that I know and that you know to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's just so fun, it's just so lovely.
[SPEAKER_02]: It felt cozy, it felt like a fireside chat.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: We will do it again because it was so much fun and the fact that it's live, like there's so many moments where we're like,
[SPEAKER_02]: Wait, no, I want to edit that out because I just said that word wrong or whatever, not do that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so pressure was on, stakes were on, but again, it felt safe and cozy at the same time, which is just the highest compliment we can pay to our our substock supporters.
[SPEAKER_02]: So thank you for supporting us.
[SPEAKER_02]: Definitely.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I feel like obviously we try to be vulnerable, especially on the Monday show, the show that you guys are listening to about different things that are going on in our agent lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when we're like behind the pay wall, I'm going to be honest.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were saying things that we would not have said.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think if we were on the show.
[SPEAKER_01]: Free introduction.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you really want Kylie and CC on the third, that is right.
[SPEAKER_02]: There was, there was one specific discussion that I'm like the Vegas rule applies, guys.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like what happens here stays here?
[SPEAKER_02]: No one is allowed to talk about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: You guys know what I'm talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you do, if you don't, that's yes, sorry.
[SPEAKER_01]: And also, if you guys become a paid subscriber after you're hearing this, and you're like, wow, I want that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can actually go back and watch the recording.
[SPEAKER_01]: I saved it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you just got to go back into our substrate.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I hate that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hate that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hate that because now they know that there's a big thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're going to do it just so they can hear the big things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hate that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Listen, listen, I believe in our community.
[SPEAKER_01]: I believe in our community, you guys are great.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, literally because it was just fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: We really enjoyed it.
[SPEAKER_02]: New fear unlocked.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, it's fine.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm fine.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, tell me about Halifax.
[SPEAKER_02]: You went to Halifax for a fun conference.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was the editor's character conference all essentially just about kind of like editing and content and they I and how thinking about it as a community and honestly it was great.
[SPEAKER_01]: I made lots of lots of notes and probably going to need to pull it together in more of like a written
[SPEAKER_01]: format and my substack just because through the act of writing, I can kind of pull all my thoughts together.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'll probably be weaving this through a number of things that we talk about and honestly just like a lot of future things that I think about, but there was some great keynotes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Robert W. Gell from York University did the first opening keynote about the contentification of culture and just really kind of blew my mind so I've lots of thoughts about
[SPEAKER_01]: how books have become contentified and memified and how in order to sell books, we have to do all of these little reels and shorts and all of this way to package our content and consumable formats, so really got me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Which is so interesting because books are like a deep dive, high cognitive labor,
[SPEAKER_02]: requires like the periods of sustained introspection type of format versus means that are like short form, dopamine and hit.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I get that what is selling the other?
[SPEAKER_02]: We're not trying to change what books are, but it's just really interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's a high interesting contrast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I've a little thought about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's something I think I'm going to like try and work into my weekend rant sub stack.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to try and work on that.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a great chat about editorial ethics in the age of AI, so the people at the conference is it was editors Canada.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was a lot of like freelance editors, some in-house editors.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was people that edited academic journals.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was people that edited books.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it was in the results of journalists.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like the concept of editing as a whole.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, I know I come from the book publishing space, but there's just a lot to think about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I know a lot of you guys listening who are writers, there's a lot of different type of people that listen and how this can relate to them, but a lot of you guys are writers and some of you guys hire freelance editors before you submit your works to agents right and so there's a lot of interesting discussion about the ways that freelance editors are kind of thinking about this and I have a lot of thoughts about how we're kind of
[SPEAKER_01]: In the in the age of just really working through a lot of trust issues, I have a lot of thoughts about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I probably have a sub step coming through about this about the concept of
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, this entire industry is run on a lot of trust.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, as an agent, I've to trust that, you know, my clients are writing when they say they're writing and editors, especially freelance editors, have to trust that writers, again, are not taking their edit letters and pumping those into LLM.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's just like a lot of the trust issues that we really need to work through as a book community and as a book publishing community.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've a lot of thoughts about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, in there were some conversations about how to use AI in ways
[SPEAKER_01]: from guidelines and things like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: It would not just put you on the spot, but where they're ways that you were like, oh, okay, yeah, that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know you're still processing all of this, but you're a first reaction where you like, huh, that could, that could, that could be a tool.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that could tool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Honestly, honestly, honestly, no, like, I come on with all of these things.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, none of these tools are useful to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a client telling me about some software, and I don't know if it's like fully AI, but they have a software where as an academic,
[SPEAKER_01]: they use this thing in their browser, where every time they're doing research, reading academic journals for their browser, they hit a button, I'm using my fingers, it's finally kidding it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But on your browser, you hit a button, and it will save it until a separate document tells you the bibliography.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I could just see a lot of other instances within the community of
[SPEAKER_01]: Writing and editing at large.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are use cases for different softwares, but I did not come away from it being like any of this will help me do my job as a literary agent But there were some really good conversations around the ethics piece and how we and also like how we create open dialogue around this right there's so much just shame or finger pointing and you know all this like blame games stuff and
[SPEAKER_01]: There's just so much at the heart of those issues where, like, how can we have open conversations about these things where we're not getting defensive?
[SPEAKER_01]: Another thing that made me think about is, you know, when we're talking about AI, are we even talking about the same thing?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because what, you know, AI is like a huge concept, is it?
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to tell you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's like a big umbrella.
[SPEAKER_01]: AGI.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like also how do we find language where we can, we talk, make sure that we're actually talking about the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, so it just lots of like little tools like that that I'm probably going to use in my dog in the way that I think that anyway, so we're still working on my thoughts, but those are some of them.
[SPEAKER_02]: I like that you spent a week in Halifax, I do not like that you did not go to the bicycle thief and have the lobster termidor.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is the best.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have only been tile effects once with my good friend Kaylee and she and I in the space of a weekend went to the bicycle thief.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it was three times like It was embarrassing.
[SPEAKER_02]: We were like adding a whole meal to the day just lunch and dinner and breakfast makes no sense like you have to have a full meal as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's it for a while.
[SPEAKER_02]: So good.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it was just so good
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I actually, any chat or towel facts, if anybody's listening, great city.
[SPEAKER_01]: If anybody's looking for a credible vacation spot, it's Halifax.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there was a list of the top 100 pizza places in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there were only two listed in Canada, one in Vancouver, and one in Halifax.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I went to the one in Halifax, Lou Puku.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was incredibly, it was the best pizza I've ever had inside of Italy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Really?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it was fantastic.
[SPEAKER_01]: Showed it to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, Halifax was a win all around, still working on my notes.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you would like all of my thoughts, check out my weekend rant, sub-stack where I kind of like, I'm gonna work through the moment and that was that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, I also want to know about this upcoming lunch and learn you have, like tell us about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so every few years, I just, I'd like to get back to the agenting side of the community, obviously, a lot of you writers listen to this show, but we also know a lot of publishing professionals listen to the show where aspiring agents and things like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I always try to make sure that I tailor some content to just helping literary agents out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I'm doing just like a $5 lunch and learn.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just priced it at $5 because I'm like, I just a little bit of accountability here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's just make sure people show up.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we have a great conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: $5, it is on June 8th at noon Eastern time, and we're just going to talk about like my 10 rules of agenting, a little bit of like agenting 101.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm probably going to do about a 40 minute presentation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Leave about 20 minutes for Q&A is just a real just like starter pack of how to be a lit agent.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've done this a couple times over the years.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've done this as a Zoom webinar.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've also taught this version of this.
[SPEAKER_01]: class to the British version of the Agents Association over there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, so I just kind of, as I said, like giving back and explaining how the book business works because I know there's so much that it's hard to actually find the information or here from an agent that's been able to do it successfully.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's what I'm doing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if anyone is listening and wondering, maybe you've taken one of my courses and you're thinking, oh no, Carly is lying, it won't be
[SPEAKER_02]: Carly is actually very good at time management people, she does not have my time blindness.
[SPEAKER_02]: She is actually quite good.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have, we've taught things together.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so much fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm always really impressed because you're like, it's going to be 90 minutes and it's 90 minutes.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's amazing that you do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really do try.
[SPEAKER_01]: Especially because it's a lunch hour thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, okay, let's just get in and out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because if I do a dating course or a weekend course, I'm like, yeah, I would have time blindness.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm like, we're getting it in and out at lunch hour and that's the plan.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, have we talked with all the things we need to talk about we have a lot of things on the list.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have breaking news this morning Which is a merger.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like just put this in the docket literally before we started recording a merger Between Adriana Galleries, you see, do you want to give us the breakdown on this?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I don't know, mergers the the word I would use, but essentially like SNS, Simon and she stir decided to fold, like, bring together atria and gallery.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're two different publishing groups.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so they're also bringing summits, I'm an element in Adam's media imprints, and they're creating this new group, the atria gallery publishing group.
[SPEAKER_02]: I actually think this is really interesting because
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, they're sad part about this.
[SPEAKER_02]: The main sad part about this is that the move is following layoffs of employees that happen just last week.
[SPEAKER_02]: Obviously not something any of us want, but the thing that I always come to when I'm looking at news like this other than who left who are the editors who are no longer there because that always changes our strategy as agents.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's also like, so, okay, so when Penguin ran my house was considering this buying, Simon and Schuster, that made news.
[SPEAKER_02]: So even people who, like, people in my life who do not care about publishing at all, they were like, oh, I heard about this, you know, I think that might happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, it became big news.
[SPEAKER_02]: And with good reason, you know, it's two of the big five.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if one of them bought the other, then that would mean more consolidation, less competition, you know, it would create all these issues, especially for agents and authors.
[SPEAKER_02]: When these things happen within the same publishing house, though, like when groups get folded into each other and joined combined aligned, but everyone called them, that doesn't make headlines, which I understand.
[SPEAKER_02]: but actually for in the subculture that we inhabit in our little microcosm, like I think writer should be playing close attention to this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Not to freak out, not to, you know, everything can anything but awareness.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I always say like, if you're a writer, don't let it derail your process.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what I mean by don't freak out.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know, can we try trying to figure out something?
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not trying to figure out what we're saying.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just want to open, this is something to pay attention to.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and like the the best writers to work with are writers who are aware of what's happening in the industry.
[SPEAKER_00]: They are protective of their creative space and they are aware.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know that's a really hard balance to strike, but the greats do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so...
[SPEAKER_02]: Knowing what's happening in the industry, knowing that this big thing is happening at Simon and Chuster, it's your competitive advantage.
[SPEAKER_02]: What it means, I mean, I've re-agent up there, has the same question right now, which is, oh my god, what's going to happen to the submission rules?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, who am I going to be able to submit to, you know, different imprints, depending on on the situation, there are a lot to compete against each other.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes they're not.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, we're going to have to see what's going to happen, but it's not, it's not good news.
[SPEAKER_02]: We don't want to fear a longer, but it's not good news.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, my instinct was like, you know, because it's just like two commercial to upmarket.
[SPEAKER_01]: publishers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously within the same organization.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think at some point they probably were starting to share resources and then it just looked like, you know, how can we provide these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're not fiction programs.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're actually quite unique and distinct.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was the fiction program that probably started to overlap a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I don't want to make excuses for them because again, I'm going to be really frustrated when we hear that we can't submit to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Coming down the pipeline, the quote from Jonathan Carp, former CEO is the one that broke the news, said, together this Adrian Gallery publishing group will be able to share resources more easily.
[SPEAKER_01]: Delineate their fiction and nonfiction publishing programs more clearly and find new strategies together for achieving growth and categories with the greatest potential.
[SPEAKER_01]: the leadership of each of friends will remain the same.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I also want to say that the people who have led these groups have led them for a long time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they are very distinct and they're great people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they are great people.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they are great.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to be very clear about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were 100%.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: The people are great.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just read a statement like share resources and I go translation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do more with the left.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: It could just be real.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, can we just be real?
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I understand the course.
[SPEAKER_02]: We all have to do it.
[SPEAKER_02]: They are available to a larger structure.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not about the individual.
[SPEAKER_02]: It never.
[SPEAKER_02]: It never is.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: No more mergers and buildings.
[SPEAKER_02]: And none of that, please.
[SPEAKER_02]: More.
[SPEAKER_02]: What new inference?
[SPEAKER_02]: So you have more places to submit.
[SPEAKER_02]: And authors can have more chances of finding a wonderful home.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what we want people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because to me, it's not about publishing more books necessarily, I do want more competition, you know, so like that to me is the difference and yeah, I'm just so full of feelings and things, you know, like if there's more competition, there's more supply, you know, like.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, then leave a little left his position to then run his Simon six, which is an imprint where he is going to publish fewer books.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, so it's, yeah, it's just hard as agents to be like, let's build this submission list.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now I have to like triple check every publishing house for all of this overlapped to know who is the head of each of these divisions.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can I submit them separately?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it is part of our job.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not complaining about me doing my job.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: having fewer places to submit is the extra jobs much harder.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, well, we want more competition.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's more competition.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tition, because these guys won't be able to have auctions against each other, probably, and all of that stuff, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe they'll create some rule, like above a certain amount.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't even know, but like it doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't matter specifically, it matters, but that's not the point.
[SPEAKER_02]: The point is like zooming out.
[SPEAKER_02]: This means less competition, less competition, typically is about news for agents and writers because our interests are aligned.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, like when a writer wins an agent wins.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so anyway, in other news, what else do you have to talk about?
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So our sub-stack of the week is this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I really wanted to, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to, I want to just shout out because I, so this was shared a client, nearly two-boughty Alexander shared this article with me and it was written by her friend and fellow
[SPEAKER_02]: So I'm excited and thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Wouldn't like people share articles with us, especially clients.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: That was so lovely.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's essentially called the Ramcom genre is in trouble, y'all.
[SPEAKER_02]: What did you think of it, Harley?
[SPEAKER_01]: It was really interesting, you know, I think I can't cross it on Substack.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, when you, people that spend a lot of time on Substack, like me, when people can kind of like pull a quote from the post, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then that's kind of like the way that people share it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I think talking with the Midwest is such an interesting conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was framed, the way that I came across it was it's framing of a conversation about the Midwest.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for those of you that don't know what the Midwest is, there's not like a super formal definition of it, but it's essentially authors who
[SPEAKER_01]: aren't lead titles, aren't New York Times bestselling authors, but have a continuing career in publishing, garnering enough sales, support, reviews, you know, some bright slices to kind of like just keep a sustainable career going and what we call like the mid-a-list.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if somebody making essentially like a living, a living wage doing this year on year, that's what I think of the mid-list and you've heard lots of conversations about the
[SPEAKER_01]: The things that I kind of pulled from this was now I have always been a midluster and I'm very well aware of my position But what happens when the cycle changes in the bubble burst is that midlisters lose out of contracts And only those at the top get signed to new deals and the list of authors at the top is smaller than you might think And so I've also pulled some numbers from the article because she said I went to brands and no one Amazon I looked at their top 100 books in the romcom category
[SPEAKER_01]: And I collected some data and noticed some patterns.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll start with Barnes and Noble.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is just kind of the part that I called for you guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, if you want to check out the full article, go to the Robcom sub-journers and trouble, Falon Ballard, F-A-L-O-N-B-A-L-L-A-R-D. OK, so some of the numbers she pulled were.
[SPEAKER_01]: The top 100 books were written by 39 different authors.
[SPEAKER_01]: 18 of those authors only had one title on the list.
[SPEAKER_01]: 10 authors on the list had at least five books in the top 100.
[SPEAKER_01]: So now we're starting to say, but like the top heavy piece of like, you know, everything, middle is kind of complicated.
[SPEAKER_01]: 52 books over half the list comes from a total of eight authors.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nine authors on the list were India at some point before going sad from what I could tell or know there were no books on the list that were in the pub only.
[SPEAKER_01]: What author has nine books in the top 100?
[SPEAKER_01]: She wrote honestly so impressive.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of the top 100 books only four were by authors of color.
[SPEAKER_01]: only seven books in the top 100 featured queer main characters to my knowledge, but I'm pretty familiar with the majority of the books on the list she said.
[SPEAKER_01]: So those are the things that stood out to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, it's just one thing that's like proof, you know, proof without the business works.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't really think there's a lot of surprises for me or potentially UCC, but I think it's an interesting way to kind of have data confirm what we know about how the business works.
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's interesting because it affects everyone, not just people who are in the biz, like publishing professionals, whether it's agents or authors, but also readers.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, so, Finland is an amazing job of highlighting what it means for readers, because when there's less availability of titles, what it means is that, you know, the 10 to 15 authors at the top will end up being what everyone essentially is reading.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so Nielie mentioned this, and she used a really interesting term.
[SPEAKER_02]: She said, this is why romance authors of shapeshifters and fallen mentions this in her and her article too.
[SPEAKER_02]: She says, quote, a lot of your favorite midlisters are going to have to pivot and either write in a different sub-genre or move to indie publishing.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you've probably already seen rom-com authors like me, move a towards more paranormal or romanticy, and I wouldn't be surprised if that continued.
[SPEAKER_02]: And quote, and I think that, you know, as a reader, you
[SPEAKER_02]: you're getting fewer books.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, in a world where only people only read like one or two books a year, that might not seem like a big deal.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sound world.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think that one of the beauties of the publishing industry is the plurality of perspectives.
[SPEAKER_02]: And when you don't have that, when that shrinks, that's a loss for everyone, you know?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it's, as Fallen put it, it's the biggest bummer because we're gonna lose out on what could have been amazing books.
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought it was really interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: I highly, highly recommend checking out her sub-staff,
[SPEAKER_02]: It was really good.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yes, romance authors are the shapeshifters.
[SPEAKER_02]: I will say this, no matter what genre you write in, if you have a strong love story at its core, that book instantly becomes more sellable.
[SPEAKER_02]: You notice this when you talk to scouts, when you talk to foreign rights agents, when you talk to them.
[SPEAKER_02]: editors, what you talk to publicists, everyone always says, and they're talking about a book, and they're pitching the book and they go, oh, and there's a love story at its heart.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that just means like, ooh, we're going to be feeling bigger feels.
[SPEAKER_02]: And romance authors are the ones who know how to create that.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, thank you, romance authors, for creating this beautiful love stories, and I honestly applaud you for being a shapeshifter as I wish you did not have to be.
[SPEAKER_02]: But this is the world.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, yeah, okay, happy news.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, can we talk?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is there any good news in this
[SPEAKER_02]: agenda we have today.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have questions.
[SPEAKER_02]: I guess that could be good news.
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's see.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, first we will hear from our sponsors and then we will get to the good news.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, everybody, we are back for my ad break.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we want to tell you about our sub stack because we have so many good things.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we've already talked about the live event that we did last week.
[SPEAKER_01]: But as you guys know, we have our paid subscriber issue that comes out every Tuesday.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have this coming out tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we have our author video with an enrichment author of the open era who discusses unconventional writing rules for all the rule breakers.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have found your people.
[SPEAKER_01]: We also have an essay from Diane Dubrovner, talks about how getting a book published is surprisingly similar to feeding a picky eater, at least as a middle-grade book that she's promoting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we have our meet the agent feature, but Jennifer, I'm a rare app from the day to black literary agency.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that, and so much more, you guys can get in your Tuesday, sub-stack, enjoy.
[SPEAKER_02]: hope you guys enjoy exciting okay so we have questions we got questions from from our community i'm gonna be the first i have multiple traditionally published books but that was years ago i'm now querying to find a new agent in a new genre and notice to many query manager forms ask quote if you've previously published a book about how many copies were sold in the first year and quoted
[SPEAKER_02]: should I assume this refers to my debut novel?
[SPEAKER_02]: If I genuinely don't know, should I reach out to my old editor or my old agent?
[SPEAKER_02]: Or just leave it like?
[SPEAKER_02]: Will someone still have this information about first-year sales if the debut was published 10 years ago?
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just want to start off by saying, you should have this information.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you should be receiving royalty statements.
[SPEAKER_02]: Even if you haven't earned out.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, you should have this paper, and I don't mean this like you should have it, like, shame on you, you don't have it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, like, someone should be giving this to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it doesn't matter if you part in ways with your agent, you should still have it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think they're thinking, like, how do I figure out what the first year of sales were?
[SPEAKER_01]: And that just requires you going back to the early statements that you got and just looking along with the period sales numbers versus a cumulative sales number.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it just requires a little bit of basic group.
[SPEAKER_02]: But what they have gone that statement is what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, totally.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, but I'm just saying, like, not everybody's that organized.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is maybe this is a great club for a great club for everybody to really be organized and keep your statements in a place.
[SPEAKER_01]: to leave them all appropriately, and to be honest, 10 years ago, this was probably coming in the mail.
[SPEAKER_01]: This probably wasn't coming via email.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this requires you going back to your documentation.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is also a great reminder for any of you guys who've been around a while to scan all of this stuff, digitize it all, and then log it somewhere, so you have it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because this actually might require a bit of slew thing if it was kind of paper copies and this person didn't keep a track of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think you should ask, like, your old agent.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, if it's a fair question, it's 100% a fair question.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I will say, you know, you were published 10 years ago,
[SPEAKER_02]: That the hardest question is also like, does it even matter?
[SPEAKER_02]: Because it was 10 years ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: I still think you should have this information.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you want to keep it blank and then have a conversation later with someone saying, Hey, it was 10 years ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: I didn't have that information at the time.
[SPEAKER_02]: I also don't think you have to stop you from querying.
[SPEAKER_02]: I personally would not be upset if someone did that at all.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to make people's lives harder.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if it was like, somebody said they need that information now.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would just say, here's the information I do have.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, just before coming up with something, just to keep that dialogue open.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, next question.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hypothetical question during the call.
[SPEAKER_01]: Agent said they'd like to see new projects at the first draft stage.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you end up signing with this agent?
[SPEAKER_01]: Then let's say novel one ultimately doesn't sell.
[SPEAKER_01]: You share a draft of novel two with your agent.
[SPEAKER_01]: And although novel two is within a genre, your agent represents your agent doesn't love it.
[SPEAKER_01]: How can an author and agent proceed in this situation?
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's a conversation, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, why don't I love it?
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like why do you love it?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like let me explain why I don't love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I definitely think it's a conversation.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think there's like a script because this is a human relationship business.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I would just chat.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I, if this were me, I would be like, okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is why I'm not loving this novel.
[SPEAKER_02]: These are my concerns.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe there's editing that we can do together.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe there's a vision that we could incorporate.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or maybe you're like, I love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I absolutely love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I do not want to change it and I'm like, okay, I don't and then Yeah, potentially one of the things that could happen is you could part ways I personally would not submit something that I wasn't in love with.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's just my style It's important to me that when I submit something like I truly believe in it and it's not for woo woo reasons I always use a analogy when you sell a house the reason why that house is going to get priced at that amount
[SPEAKER_02]: is because of hard data, number of bedrooms, neighborhood, how one of the most recent renovation was, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_02]: The reason why a book sells, if there's no track record, especially from the author.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like the data, the number of bedrooms, the recent renovation, that's the emotions you feel when you read it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like that is the data.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for me, I need to love it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, potentially one of the resolutions could essentially be,
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, I wish you well, you keep going on your journey and it's all very amicable and sad for me because it's always sad but but you know, this is life sad not tragedy sad.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, to conversation.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's it's happened.
[SPEAKER_02]: It happens to every agent, honestly, where you go.
[SPEAKER_02]: At least once, you know, like it's it's it's it's quite common.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think this is a classic example of
[SPEAKER_01]: writers wanting to be the quote good student or you know want to be the good client and you know make sure they're just like delivering everything that an agent wants all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's just going to be times that it's way more complicated than that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is not that simple.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you go in trying to just like, you know, button it all up and cross all the keys, not all the eyes.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's just so much complexity that goes into this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And honestly, sometimes it's that you might have had a loose conversation about it and the agent goes, yeah, that sounds interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then by the time they see the draft, it's like, well, the market has changed or that didn't come through the way that they thought or agent expectations were different than the way that it was executed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's just a million different nuances.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why this relationship is just so important for it to be full of communication and trust so that you guys couldn't get on the same page.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, so you see, I'm going to read you the next one.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, should I have another thought?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I was good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Read the you beat.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, since you're the former lawyer, I get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to feed this one to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I keep seeing that I am offering is not legal advice.
[SPEAKER_02]: I want to make sure everybody knows this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: This podcast is never legal.
[SPEAKER_01]: At the end of the day.
[SPEAKER_01]: ever.
[SPEAKER_01]: I keep seeing that through the anthropic settlement.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some publishers turned out to be not registering copyrights.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm confused on what this means.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are those books not automatic protected?
[SPEAKER_01]: How can a publishing contract not include copyright protections?
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, I might have missed it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Being talked about in the podcast, I'd love to hear your explanation, sound scary, thanks for the info.
[SPEAKER_01]: I enjoy listening to the shooting the shit segments.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think that I think this person might have this question because we hear a lot, like it's something that you just hear colloquially.
[SPEAKER_02]: As soon as you write something, it's been
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, the fact that it exists, like it's, if it's written, it's copyrighted automatically.
[SPEAKER_02]: You hear that a lot.
[SPEAKER_02]: And yes, there are copyright protections that you get automatically because you've written the thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: But there are also extra protections that you get when you register a copyright in the United States.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why every publishing contract I've seen anyway.
[SPEAKER_02]: between the author and the publisher has an obligation from the publisher to register copyright within a specific time frame.
[SPEAKER_02]: It does have to happen with it a specific time frame, or else those extra protections won't be valid and won't essentially exist.
[SPEAKER_02]: You will not be protected.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if that's the distinction, you know, there are automatic protections that happen and then there are some extra protections that do require registration.
[SPEAKER_02]: What I think you're referring to and because we all heard it was some publishers did have that obligation in their contracts, but they still did not register at least not within the specific timeframe.
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of them did not register at it all.
[SPEAKER_02]: Part of what an agent does, part of our project management is reaching out to publishers and me like, hey, wanna make sure this was copyrighted.
[SPEAKER_02]: This wanna make sure this was registered.
[SPEAKER_02]: We should not have to do this because they should.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, they are the big, gigantic corporations.
[SPEAKER_02]: They have 1,000% should have processes in place and support their staff.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're lovely, lovely staff to do this.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, part of the project management that often falls onto us because, well, this could do it is following up on that.
[SPEAKER_02]: It happened and it does mean that it potentially could mean anyway, that for many of these authors, they will not have the claims that other authors will in the anthropic settlement.
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember I don't remember who it was.
[SPEAKER_02]: There was some publisher who said if we failed you if we did not register.
[SPEAKER_02]: Copyright.
[SPEAKER_02]: We will make you hold.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it might have been McMillan.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: I honestly don't remember and I don't want to miss speak, but like they did say we will make you whole like we will we will compensate you for our error, which again, whoever did this and assuming the of course do it is doing the right thing in my opinion.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it does sounds scary, but you know, this this actually speaks to a larger project management thing, right, which is.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's so much that publishers are supposed to do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then they don't.
[SPEAKER_02]: That I have a friend who's a former lawyer and she works at a gigantic agency.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not going to say the name.
[SPEAKER_02]: She probably wouldn't want me to.
[SPEAKER_02]: gigantic.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she works in their contracts department.
[SPEAKER_02]: Currently, you know what I'm talking about probably.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she, and she was like, when she first started, every time she was reviewing a contract, she was like, wait, but if this gets litigated, then and her boss would interrupt her and go, no one's going to bring this to court.
[SPEAKER_00]: That doesn't happen.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not saying it literally, never happens, but it is an industry where it rarely happens compared to others.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's another piece here.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, thank you for digging into that for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Once again, not legal advice, but you asked the question and you see, keep you in answer.
[SPEAKER_01]: OK, the next thing on our list is talking about the AALA agent survey results.
[SPEAKER_01]: So every two years,
[SPEAKER_01]: the American Association of Literary Agents does a big survey where they ask lots of bioographical questions, but also lots of kind of income and salary questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also like, you know, what's on your mind as an agent, what are some of the greater issues and concerns as an organization and as small businesses, because all agencies are small businesses essentially.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the things that stood out to me were,
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, just the, like, how do agents make money question?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because one of the things the survey was trying to parse was, in previous years, they would ask the question, you know, how much money do you make essentially it, but there wasn't the caveat of, like, from your agenting business versus any other side of the second careers or second jobs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: agent business versus other elements of their careers, essentially.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I thought that was really interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it just really speaks to, I think, what a lot of, I hope a lot of people who do this show know, you know, I assume you guys listen to us every week, you know, maybe for years.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there is a lot of financial instability in being illiterary agent.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, especially as a newer agent, when you're kind of starting out building a list, we've talked about health contracts are really slow.
[SPEAKER_01]: We never know when we're getting paid.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, obviously we're working as hard in as fast as we can to do, you know, good safe work, protections for our clients.
[SPEAKER_01]: It depends on how many clients you have.
[SPEAKER_01]: It depends on how many copies there books sell translations.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, all of these elements kind of come into this like diversified portfolio that an agent ends up building.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's just a lot of financial precarities, scarcity mindset, and financial instability, because in which leads to agents creating alternative revenue streams to kind of make up for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it's obviously within the partnership with their household, as long as a certain amount of money is bringing in as a household, it can work for people.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's also a lot of people who are breadwinners as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So anyway, lots of interesting information
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's so interesting to see how so much of what agents go through, especially early in their careers mirror what writers go through.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like every line you just said, could apply to a writer, you know, a writer has to have other streams of income because their book income is insufficient and they have to do other thing and maybe their partner helps and it's so interesting how they're mirroring and it's unsurprising, hey, we get paid commission, you know, commission on what the writers make and yeah, we might have many clients, but we also make a portion of that 15% remember that the agency keeps 15% the agent.
[SPEAKER_02]: unless they are an agency owner is not keeping the full 15.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, it's definitely really interesting.
[SPEAKER_02]: I enjoyed reading it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I thank the ALA for doing it.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, a question I had.
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, I don't even think it would be necessarily possible to pick this into a summary.
[SPEAKER_02]: But a question I've always had because there's something that I am very mindful of.
[SPEAKER_02]: I would love to see a breakdown of how many people
[SPEAKER_02]: have a safety net.
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, how do you even measure that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Which is so hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we're defining it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: In this industry, like oftentimes, you'll hear people say that they're struggling to make ends meet.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, it's in state unstable.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then...
[SPEAKER_02]: casually they will mention a house and the hamstrings are going to in the weekend.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's their parents and they are still in a financially unstable situation.
[SPEAKER_02]: Personally, I'm not discounting that.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not minimizing that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And honestly, if your parents have a house and the hamstrings, that sounds awesome.
[SPEAKER_02]: Good for you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wish that weren't my such.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Good for you.
[SPEAKER_02]: All the applause.
[SPEAKER_02]: No, no shade.
[SPEAKER_02]: But it does change.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like the risks you can take.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is a very risky business.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you have that sort of like parental safety not.
[SPEAKER_02]: or other safety nets is really, really, like, it's just a game changer, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So I, again, not something a survey can, can measure most likely, but maybe because I just read in her autocracy and I thought that was really good.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a wonderful non-trientidal.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I don't like a lot, yeah, it's been on my mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I also love that book.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some other things that I wanted to kind of pull it from the data.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the things I thought was really interesting is,
[SPEAKER_01]: the largest percentage of, so like in terms of the salary, we'll call it a salary, even though we know it's commission mostly.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the salary ban income ban that received the most amount of money from the agency position, meaning like the agent doing the job, or it could be obviously a
[SPEAKER_01]: somebody in contracts in a larger agency, but it was the band of $50,000 to $100,000 a year.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they made the most amount of money out of any other group, which was 25.8% as income from the agency position.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought that was really interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when you get above that band, so there's the 100 to 150 band, the 150 to 200 band, the 250 band, the 250 band, the 250 plus band, the numbers are lower, which we thought was also interesting because they probably become partners or owners.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it's not from the position that they're receiving the money.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also maybe some equity in the business.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I found that kind of shift was really interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of really interesting data.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another piece of data I thought that was really interesting was 32% of respondent so agents earning less than $25,000 a year work with 6 to 10 clients versus 38% of respondents earning more than $250,000 a year to work with 21 to 30 clients just suggesting again over time you build a client base.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think there's also a definition if you're of what an active client is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think that was really interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Another piece that I thought was fascinating of the survey was basically everybody agreed in the survey that our job is a high-end put job, meaning like vast amounts of time and energy relars that have to go into this job.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, basically, yeah, it was very clear everybody felt that this was a
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: A high input job.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's a second part of the question was, if it's high input, is it low reward or is it high reward?
[SPEAKER_01]: So we know what's high input, what is the reward?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you feel like it's low reward?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you feel like it's high reward?
[SPEAKER_01]: and as people progressed in their financial journeys as agents, it becomes higher and higher reward, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's like you're putting all of this energy in, starting to see results.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so like for example, once the kind of, it seems like this like six figures threshold is really interesting, because once you hit the six figure threshold, the 100 to 150k
[SPEAKER_01]: All of a sudden, the higher reward goes from 42% in the previous bucket.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the 50 to 100k, all the way up to 76%.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like as soon as like there's something about that like six figure, obviously part of its mentality part of it is just what you're able to do, you're spending power, you're buying power with the money that you're bringing in from doing this work.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just thought that was really because a huge job, 42% to 76%.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all of a sudden it becomes high and put higher reward as opposed to high and put lower reward.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, that's true to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: It does.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, the piece that's missing there is the risk, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: Like if there's the input, yes, there's the reward, but there's also the risk.
[SPEAKER_02]: Totally.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because eating is a very high risk high reward.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like if you risk it and you make it, you make it big and it's amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: And sometimes you risk it and you don't make it big.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's lose big and it is a lot of time that you don't get back.
[SPEAKER_02]: It can be easy to go.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay, this year, random numbers.
[SPEAKER_02]: This year, I made 200,000 as opposed to the first year where I made 10.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just remember that that 200,000, like logically, you have to count that towards the years you weren't making anything either.
[SPEAKER_02]: The year you made zero, the year you made 10.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, because that was time that you put in.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's how the math, that's how I look at them out anyway.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like,
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not that all of a sudden I got a new job and my new job pays me this, you know, it's you have to look back and you have to think yes, be more tired in those of your entire history doing the work.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you you I was compared I was talking to an agent who used to be a lawyer and she was saying she's been doing this for seven years and she just hit what her starting salary was when she became a lawyer
[SPEAKER_02]: Back in the day, like the starting salary.
[SPEAKER_02]: See that again.
[SPEAKER_02]: What was it?
[SPEAKER_02]: How many years?
[SPEAKER_02]: Seven years.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's been doing this for seven years.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she just hit what her starting salary was as a lawyer.
[SPEAKER_02]: Back when she started in the legal profession and that was many, many, many years ago.
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, this person is incredibly successful.
[SPEAKER_02]: like the the amount that she just hit is a great amount.
[SPEAKER_02]: Great amount.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what?
[SPEAKER_02]: I can see what the amount is.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not saying her name.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's 160.
[SPEAKER_02]: 160 used to be the starting salary for a lawyer at a big firm.
[SPEAKER_02]: We are talking US dollars in 2000 and when did she start?
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think she's started in 2011 or something.
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't remember no, maybe 2010.
[SPEAKER_02]: So now she just hit 160.
[SPEAKER_02]: She's incredibly successful, incredibly successful.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she was talking about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And she was like, OK, so now it's like, you're one of being a lawyer.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm like, yes and no, because of the advertising thing we talked about, but also because, you know, as a lawyer, again, if you're in a big firm, this is like kind of a generalization.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you know what you're going to make.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're two, you're three, you're three.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are some firms have bonuses, depending if you've been clients or not, but whatever.
[SPEAKER_02]: But as an agent, you don't know, and I mean that in the best possible way as well, not just in a bad way, like it's not a situation where you're too, you'll make 180, you're too, you might make 250, you know, you might make an amazing amount of money.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, it's how agents make money is so fascinating.
[SPEAKER_01]: Financial components and so I'm sure everyone listening is now super excited to join that because that sounds like so I know And there's also like the mental component of it right because there's like the climb and the fight and the grind and then you hit a number and you're like Oh well that was supposed to make me feel a certain way and then maybe the next year's like a flip down and then you're like Yeah, is this now the sort of a down trajectory and then it's like yeah, it's back up and you're like that's great
[SPEAKER_01]: how many more years can we climb?
[SPEAKER_01]: And there is no stabilization in my experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, I don't know, it's really hard to explain, because as I kind of explained at the jump, like there's just so many different things that go into the diversification of this quote unquote four-lit folio, and I hate to kind of like make it sound numb with like financial terms, but
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, we work on a variety of projects that's intellectual property and they are sold in a variety of ways and that's great.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it provides a lot of just opportunity and the best agents, you know, are able to kind of just make the most of, you know, every opportunity that comes their way and, you know, obviously help their clients diversify.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's helps the agency diversify and again, it's like a just a boring way to think about it, but it's a way to kind of mitigate
[SPEAKER_01]: risky job, so there's just there is a lot to think about and of course yeah, I'll talk about all of that might in my lunch and learn because there's a lot of feelings that go along with all these numbers
[SPEAKER_02]: 100%.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to draw to everybody's attention to another scam.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like it is freaking endless.
[SPEAKER_01]: This one showed up on threads.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it's like, you know, really we're following for these, but I feel terrible for you guys because I get literally, I've been getting DMs almost on a daily basis of this person who ever is impersonating me.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's brutal out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: This person said, is this normal?
[SPEAKER_01]: I recently got accepted by a literary agent.
[SPEAKER_01]: She requested access to my Amazon account.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm assuming this person was self publishing like a password and all.
[SPEAKER_01]: That sounds sketchy.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I didn't do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: She keeps telling me it's the standard for literary agents.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the person writes underneath that this person is like pretending to be a real literary agent, but there's a Gmail email address.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've talked to you guys about this, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: No hotmail email.
[SPEAKER_01]: No Gmail email.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going to get contact the agency, you know, just so they're over there, but we can't do anything about it to yeah, and agencies will be happy to tell you whether it's them or not like we wish we did not live in this world, but I promise you we would rather you check like
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's horrible.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's happened to this person and to whoever else.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's time to like have rude old right because these are pretending to be legitimate agents and sometimes they'll pull well that this is what happens with me.
[SPEAKER_01]: They pull a picture of me from somewhere in the internet put it in the email signature so it looks like me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: misspelled my name added at you know what I'm not thinking if I had if I were being contact by a fake heartly and there was no like obvious way to know whether it was you or not what question would I ask you to make sure it was you oh my god there's so many fun questions I could ask I I know exactly what I would ask there's only you would know the answer to some of these and that's exciting
[SPEAKER_02]: I like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: This account for the poor writers because they don't know you like I know.
[SPEAKER_01]: But no, I know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, this is in one mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've had many a conversation on many, many a journey in trip and work.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but I also wouldn't be able to ask anything that I didn't want in writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_02]: So then yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's all we have time for.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've been chatting for almost an hour.
[SPEAKER_01]: We hope you guys enjoyed this this conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've gotten a lot of different directions as always.
[SPEAKER_01]: Leave us a comment on YouTube.
[SPEAKER_01]: We just need to elaborate on.
[SPEAKER_01]: We really enjoy spending this time with you guys and we will see you again next week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, bye everyone.
[SPEAKER_00]: CC Lera 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.wshermin.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: Carly Waters is a literary agent at PS Literary Agency, but a work on this podcast is not affiliated with the agency and the views expressed by Carly 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.