This is the how-to book you need right now, the one with “am I ready to query” and “what does my platform need to look like” and “what if no one buys my book” and “what happens if someone buys my book”. We have a great episode, talking about creating this book, writing this book and living this book—because Kate McKean is not only a very experienced agent, she has also lived the answer to all those questions and that’s part of what makes it special.

Follow: Kate McKean Agents and Books

Also find her at agentsandbooks.com

And buy this book! Write Through It: An Insider’s Guide to Publishing and the Creative Life

#AmReading

Kate: Madeleine Roux, A Girl Walks into the Forest (Dark, feminist and rage-y)

KJ: Francesca Segal, Welcome to Glorious Tuga (not any of those above things)

Alison Espach, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance (somewhere in between)

Writers and readers! KJ, here. If you love #AmWriting—and I know you do—and especially if you love the regular segment at the end of most episodes where we talk about what we've been reading, you will also love my weekly #AmReading— find it at kjdellantonia.com or kjda.substack.com or by clicking on my name on Substack, if you do that kind of thing. Your #tbr won’t be sorry.

Transcript below!

EPISODE 453 - TRANSCRIPT

KJ Dell'Antonia

Writers and readers, KJ here, if you love Hashtag AmWriting, and I know you do, and especially if you love the regular segment at the end of most episodes where we talk about what we've been reading, you will also love my weekly Hashtag AmReading email. Is it about what I've been reading and loving? It is. And if you like what I write, you'll like what I read. But it is also about everything else I’ve been hashtag am doing, sleeping, buying clothes and returning them, launching a spelling bee habit, reading other people's weekly emails. Let's just say it's kind of the email about not getting the work done, which I mean that's important too, right? We can't work all the time. It's also free, and I think you'll really like it. So you can find it at kjdellantonia.com or kjda.substack.com or by clicking on my name on Substack, if you do that kind of thing. Or, of course, in the show notes for this podcast, come hang out with me. You won't be sorry.

Multiple Speakers:

Is it recording? Now it's recording. Yay! Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone. Try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. All right, let's start over. Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now, one, two, three.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia, and this is Hashtag AmWriting the weekly podcast about writing all the things, short things, long things, pitches, proposals. This is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done. And I interviewed someone last week, who told me that they did not realize I did the introduction live, to which I was like, "Wait, does it sound the same to you every time?" Because I don't know, in my mind, I go off on a tangent every single time. So I am KJ Dell'Antonia, as you probably know, author of three novels and a couple of nonfiction books, and former editor at the New York Times, and, gosh, I have, I have done a bunch of things, but I'm not going to tell you about them right now, because I am really excited about my guest today, who is Kate McKean, and she is the creator of Agents and Books, which is a Substack slash, an email newsletter. For those of you that are not Substack users, you don't have to know what that is to get this, but I'm telling you fundamentally that if you're listening to my words right now, you should be signed up for that, and you're probably going to need the book that we're talking about, which is called Write Through It: An Insider's Guide to Publishing and the Creative Life. It is excellent. It is all the books that I relied on deeply when I got into this industry, rolled up in one book, which doesn't mean you won't buy all the others, because we're writers, and that's what we do. We buy books about writing. We're supposed to right? But I feel like sometimes that's what we do, we buy books about writing, anyway. All right, I'm done introducing, Kate I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for coming.

Kate McKean

I'm really happy to be here. I'm excited to chat.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, this is going to be good. So this is, this is the book that anyone who is considering traditional publishing needs as both an encouraging guide to how hard it is going to be to get to all the points that you need to get to be ready to even try to traditionally publishing, and then to the process of traditionally publishing. This is how do you know when you're finished? This is how do you know when to pitch? This is how do you pitch. This is how do you deal with the inevitable rejections when you are pitched, this is what happens next. This is the good news and the bad news and the other news and all the news. And the blurb on the front is that it is a wildly generous guide. It is from Sarah Knight, who I adore, and it is! That is, that is most accurate...

Kate McKean

Thank you.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Blurb that I have ever read, I think, or...

Kate McKean

Sarah was so kind to read. I know she reads the newsletter too, and we know each other from way back when she was an editor at Simon Schuster. And I could not be more grateful that she said the kind words she did.

KJ Dell'Antonia

She's amazing, and they are and you this is a generous book. So I do have questions, but first I just have to gush for a while. So...

Kate McKean

I’ll take it.

KJ Dell'Antonia

I have kind of an unspoken policy of being very judicious in taking writing advice of any kind from someone who has not published. And there are 100% exceptions to that. I have an amazing freelance editor who she reads and she edits and wow. But there are also people who write books about writing from a place of having written things, and that's about it. And. And you know that truly, I mean, first of all, you're, you're an agent, you've, you know, you've been in this industry, you've got masses of experience. And secondly, although this is your first published book, it is not your first finished book, it is not...

Kate McKean

Not at all.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Even your first pitched book. It's not the book that got you an agent. And you are so generous in sharing those experiences with people, and they're going to help.

Kate McKean

I hope so. I mean, it's not lost on me that the first published book I have about writing and publishing books, and I even say it in the book. You know, I've tried to sell several picture books and several novels, and maybe I'm just not a great fiction writer. You know, it's very possible that is true. We'll find out. I don't know. I do have a picture book coming out in 2026, so one of them did eventually work. It's coming out with Sourcebooks, and I'm very excited. It's, you know, I know that people probably think, Oh, well, you're just, you're an agent. You could just, like, walk into a publisher and get a book deal like my friend. I am sorry that it's not true. If it had been true, I would have written 50,000 books by now, because I actually really, I mean, it's my job, but I also like doing it myself, but I'm not. I'm not special, you know, like I'm special and privileged because I know all the ins and outs, but I'm not. Nobody's just like rolling out the red carpet and handing me 1000's, billions of dollars to write a book.

KJ Dell'Antonia

Yeah, what I have said about about my fiction writing experience was, and I feel quite certain it was true for you as well. The thing that I had, and I will own it, is that I knew the people that I was sending my query to would look at it, because they knew who I was. That actually just meant it had to be awfully good, because it also means they're going to remember who you are. And if it sucks, they'll remember that next time. Whereas, if you don't have that particular thing and you send out a query that that sucks, the agent is not going to remember your name. So the next time you roll around and you send a better query, it's going to be fine, but the next time that writer rolls around and sends a better query. People are going to be like, well, yeah, I don't kno...

The Ultimate How To: Write, Pitch, Maybe Publish with Kate McKean from Agents+Books